Chain of Memories
by Ayoshen
Summary: In this castle, to find is to lose, and to lose is to find. I was about to learn this lesson the hard way. Had I known, I never would have walked through that god-forsaken door. Emma Swan's POV, Swan Queen later on with a hearty dose of general Kingdom Hearts insanity and feelings and keyblades.
1. Destiny Islands

**A/N: **For several weeks, I wasn't going to write this... and then I did. I wasn't going to upload it... but then I did. Please accept my deepest apologies, especially you guys waiting for new chapters of my other fics. I don't deserve you or your beautiful reviews. Nevertheless... this happened. Swan Queen to be introduced in later chapters. (I know I keep saying this all the time. I'm honestly so sorry. lol)

It's just that the idea's been on my mind ever since I started playing the Kingdom Hearts series some months ago. Combining the two would make the unholy mother of crossovers and I am going to reject your reality until Square Enix and ABC fall hopelessly in love and make this baby. In the meantime...

* * *

**Chapter 1: Destiny Islands**

_So much to do, so little time._

Huh? Who said that?

_Take your time. Don't be afraid._

I've never experienced anything like this before. I hear the voice in my head, loud and clear, but no matter what direction I look, there's nothing that could possibly produce it. No direction. No distortion. No light. Just an echo in the bottomless darkness I've succumbed to.

_The door is still shut._

What door? There is no door. I'm falling in the middle of nothing and that's not a good time to be twisting my mind with riddles, Voice. There is no door. There is no nothing as far as the eye can see. Or have I just not opened my eyes yet? It's the moment in pitch black night when you honestly can't tell whether you're blind or just sleeping. I try, but nothing changes.

_You will face many challenges. You will forget and keep on forgetting until you've forgotten who you are. _

Well, that's a cheerful promise, Voice. I feel a hell of a lot better now, thanks.

_In your deepest memories, as little of an apology as it is, know that I did not mean to do this to you._

I hope the kid forgives me.

_Your path is set. Now, Emma, it's time to wake up. And remember; the closer you get to the light, the greater your shadow becomes. But don't be afraid. You hold the mightiest weapon of all._

I'm dying.

_In this castle, to find is to lose, and to lose is to find._

Seashells. That's what it reminds me of. When you hold a seashell close to your ear, this is the sound it makes, the rustle of waves somewhere far, far away.

Where did I learn that?

Just lying here feels good enough. I could stay like this. The surface of whatever it is I'm lying on is rough and it nibbles into the skin on my cheek, which is the only thing keeping me grounded. I don't mind. It's something to hold onto, at least.

Because as much as I'd hate to admit it, I'm empty.

"Uh, Miss? Miss?"

At first I ignore it, but the second time something pokes my arm. "What?" I mumble, annoyed, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep, and roll onto my side. A hand settles on the spot it once poked.

"Are you okay?"

I could at least greet this new voice. Not that I've ever been very good with manners, but it doesn't seem to mean me any harm and the faster I reply, the faster it'll go away and leave me to my sleep.

"I'm fine, kid." I didn't mean to say 'kid'. With a frown I brush it off as some sort of reflex. Besides, the voice does sound childish, so if they get offended, I can't be blamed. Much. Lazily I open one eye to indeed find a boy looking down at me with worry, gloved hands on his knees. The light is sharp and strong and it hurts, as if I just learned how to see for the first time, so I come to the conclusion I don't need to know every detail of this boy's face and give in to the blackness again. "Go away."

"Are you lost? Hey, maybe I can help!"

Nope, this kid cannot take a hint. Or more like a blatant smack across the face. This will require a more hands-on approach. Sighing, I sit up quickly enough to startle him. "Look, kid, I'm not lost. I don't need your help. Don't you have school or something? Scram, will you?"

It wasn't seashells, I note in surprise. We are at an actual beach, with seawater and fish and sand and all. The sun is shining, but something seems to be off about it, like I'm looking at it through a veil of shadow. I can't see it, but I know I'm in it. Maybe it's the lack of warmth on my face.

The boy has brown hair that is so spiky, sticking out in all directions, that I can't help but wonder how in the world it stays like that without some serious L'Oréal care. He's wearing something I can only describe as a shirt with a hood and a zipper in the front (what exactly is the purpose of that, I wonder), shorts that are way too big to be his size and... a sword? Isn't this kid a little young to be carrying weapons around?

He puts his hands on the back of his head and pouts. "Sheesh, you don't have to be so mean. You can't blame a guy for checking. From over there I couldn't be sure whether you were flat out dead or just taking a nap," he explains, pointing to a smaller island connected to ours by a wooden bridge. There are palm trees over there, but none down here.

The boy abuses the opportunity and while I'm taking half a second to glance over there, he falls rather than sits butt first next to me and gives me the most sickeningly sweet smile ever. "My name's Sora. And you are?"

Sigh. "Swan. Emma Swan," I mutter, pressing my palms to my eyes. Lord, the sun is bright.

"Good, we're finally getting somewhere!" he chirps. "So, were you looking for something, or why do you have a keyblade?"

"A what now?"

"A keyblade. That thing you were holding, over there. I assumed it was yours," he frowns. Apparently he's as confused as I am, but that's nothing in comparison to what my eyebrows do when I look over my shoulder and see an actual giant, black key. The handle is in the shape of an apple. It's simple, but I think I've seen a smaller version of it before. Yes, in a town. Somebody had a whole lot of these... skeleton keys for some reason. Ugh, my head hurts when I try to think about it. So that's it? A skeleton keyblade? Why would I have one? Why does he have one? Why is his different? I doubt there is one door large enough for this, let alone two.

Sora seems to sense the tension inside me. Pretty observant for a little goober. "You don't know? So you _are_ lost."

I was just fine before you woke me up. Sigh. "I must be, then. I don't know."

"Hmm," he hums and ponders for a moment, standing up. "Well, if you're lost, you must be looking for yourself. I could help you look, if you want," he suggests and extends his hand to me.

It's strange, having this boy around. It doesn't seem like he should belong around me. No, it doesn't seem like I should belong around him, that's more like it. I'm cold and tired and I want to go to sleep and the kid will not leave me be. "What if I don't want to look?"

"Oh, I think you do. Someone once told me that what I'm looking for is somewhere in this castle. I think they did. The closer I get, the more I forget, that's how I know I'm moving forward. Anyway, if you're this lost, you must be pretty close!"

Oh, if only it were that simple, kid. Could he be right, though? Maybe I am more than a shell. Maybe I've only forgotten that I forgot. It would make slightly more sense than this pitiful existence. He's grinning from ear to ear again and I know it's no use reasoning with this boy and his infuriating but strangely appealing way of always looking at the bright side of things. I can't help but smile, and he grins some more at that.

"There! I knew you could lighten up!"

Castle, though? This kid's first impressions are endearing, I'll give him that, but he's either a seer or he's completely nuts. On the other hand, I did wake up on a beach with a key-shaped sword and nothing to stand up for...

I decide I can tolerate this kid.

"What are you looking for?" I ask, finally taking the hand he so patiently left reaching out to me.

It's the first time I see the corners of his lips turn downward, and immediately I feel ashamed of asking. "A friend of mine," he says, twirling the chain on the key in his hand.

Do I have friends? I don't think so. I presume I act as standoffish with him as I would with anyone else. Who would be friends with that?

But I exist, therefore I must have been born, therefore I must have a family. It is only logical. I must have a mother and father. I could look for them, right? I don't know whether they miss me, but if they're real, they might. It's worth a shot. "Me too, kind of, I guess."

"Hey, I know." He fumbles about in his pockets for something and finally pulls out several crown-shaped cards. "Cards open doors to other worlds. I've already been through these, but we can go back and look for your friends together."

I raise an eyebrow at him. "Cards? Other worlds? Kid, have you been drinking? You're too young for that."

"I have a name, you know! It's Sora," he grumbles and forces the cards into my hand.

Rolling my eyes, I examine the rectangular pieces of paper. One has a canine pawprint etched into it. Another shows a green cricket with an umbrella. An apple red as blood... "Fine, Soar-uh, whatever. Lead the way," I say, taking the first step forward in a heroic march to... where exactly?

"Sora," he corrects.

"Sora," I shrug. You know what they say; never mispronounce the name of the hand that gives you free tickets to Disneyworld.

"The door is right over there. That will take us back to the entrance chamber, and from there you can choose where to go," he explains and runs off the coast to an oasis in the shadow nearby.

I follow him only reluctantly; though I should be happy for some protection from the glaring sunshine, it only gets even colder under the canopy. "You do realize I don't believe anything you say, don't you?" I clarify, unaware of the extent of the boy's understanding of sarcasm.

He doesn't turn to look at me and instead starts to crawl through a thin corridor in the rock into a cave I would have missed completely if it weren't for him. He must know this place exceptionally well, I think. Perhaps this is where he lost his friend. Or he's just spent an unhealthy amount of time looking for them here. The slick wet walls of the rock don't look like a particularly inviting prospect to me, but then again it's not like I have much of a choice. This kid will bring me to my end yet.

"Don't worry, I wouldn't believe myself either," he laughs as he proceeds through into an enclave with me close behind. Nothing too interesting here. A drawing of a spiky-haired boy and a girl on the wall, some mushrooms, stones and... a door. A wooden door traced with gold, with no handle. "Here we are." He brushes dirt and spider webs off his ridiculously large shorts and gives me a look of pure impatience when he exclaims, "Where's your keyblade?"

"Oh, that thing? I left it at the beach." Do I look like I want to carry around a giant key for no reason?

He blinks once, twice, and then bursts into uncontrollable laughter.

"What's so funny?"

"That's not how it works, dummy. This is the door. Keys open doors, get it?"

Actually, I don't.

"Mine's gone, too, haven't you noticed?"

Actually, I haven't. But he's right; the silver key with a golden-blue handle is nowhere to be found, and I'm pretty sure it was at least half his size. I must still be dreaming.

"You don't have to keep holding onto it. Just think of it and it will appear. Watch."

Yeah, right. I wish everything worked that way. Need some money? No problem, just think of it. Food, love, self-realization in life? Just think of it! Memories? Ooh, we've hit a vicious cycle. Sora is crazy.

...Or I thought he was up until the part where the same giant key materializes out of thin air in his hand.

Okay. That's it. I'm a lunatic. I'm insane and someone's probably overdosing my body on sedatives somewhere as we speak.

Sora insists we won't be able to move on unless I do it too, so I figure it'll be easier to show him I can't do any of that black voodoo magic. I'm thinking of the key. Half my size, coal black, metallic sheen, an apple in a circle. Speaking of which, I'd go for some apple pie just about now. I don't remember what it tastes like but I think I like it. "See? Nothi-" A ray of light interrupts me mid-word as an apple-shaped hilt fills my palm, starting from a tiny speck of dust in the air, then more until it looks and buzzes like a swarm of black bees, and then the solid cold surface of a skeleton keyblade, all in the matter of seconds. Both of our 'keys' then point towards the door on their own accord. It terrifies me, like, you know, most inanimate objects moving by themselves would. Whatever world this is, this is just not right. Sora is smiling, though, and for some reason, that calms me down a bit. He must have done this before. And if I die because of some keyblade-backlash, it's not like I have anything to lose. At least I'll finally go back to sleep. I'll dream of falling, falling down the pitch black abyss forever, with no trace of light. And I'll be content, as content as a shell can be.

The light blinds me.

_This world has been connected._

The floor is white. So are the walls and the ceiling and the stairs in front of me. There are two doors - one before me, one behind - a giant key in my hand and several crown-shaped cards in my pocket.

"Sora?"

Silence is the best answer he could give. It's not like I expected him to stick around.

Had I known, I never would have walked through that god-forsaken door.


	2. Wonderland

**Chapter 2: Wonderland**

I'm faced with a choice I never asked for. I wasn't built for this, was I? What do you do when you're faced with a decision you're not sure you want to make in the first place, only everyone (in this case the only other human being here) tells you to do so? I'm confused. One surprise was enough already, now I don't know what awaits me behind this door. The moral of the story is: never trust children. (Especially children playing soldiers with keys.) You might end up like me.

The cards feel like cotton candy in my pocket, like if I touch them, I will never get them off my hands. I don't like cards. I don't think I've ever played much with anyone; not that I can remember, just a feeling. They're foreign, strange. They're also my only way out.

Browsing through them, I catch a glimpse of a hat sitting upside down and it reminds me of cabaret. The mental association immediately spreads to silly dresses, colors, song and dance. Perhaps this card will take me to a happier place, I think. As white as this… _castle_ is, all the paint in the world couldn't mask the darkness underneath. It seeps into chills running down my spine like adder venom. I should have stayed at the beach. At least there I had the illusion of a sun.

So what now? Do I put the card in like it's a slot machine? Zing! One strange world comin' right up. Enjoy your stay and come again. Somehow I don't think that's how it works. But then again, I don't know anything about how anything works in this place.

As it turns out, neither do I have to. The hat card slips out of my hand and flies right through the massive two-sided door without so much as a "thanks for all the fish," upon which the hinges creak in agony after years of scarce usage and the door opens inward, beckoning me in.

"Or you could do that," I mutter under my breath. Then I realize I'm talking to a piece of paper and a block of pale stone.

"Papa? Papa!"

The resemblance this bears to a dream is extreme. I was there and now I'm here. There was nothing in between, no movement, no sound, no words, no time... What is this voice?

"Papa!"

It's just trees and moss, I remark mentally with a hearty dose of disappointment. No hats or songs or dance, just this voice and oaks everywhere you look. Ironically, at least it's not as cold here as it was on the island. There's a loud crack of breaking branches and roots being torn nearby. Cries follow. Ragged, sniveling, semi-coughing cries of a child who just scraped a knee or two. The voice is too high and too young to belong to Sora, but that doesn't matter right now.

I follow the noise as accurately as I can, almost tripping myself over a stump in the process. The moss all around makes it difficult for me to move fast as it buries my feet in its greens, and hard to see the obstacles in my way. No wonder someone's ass just got whooped. Fortunately the branches are high enough not to hit me in the face too often, so I can still run at a reasonable pace whilst keeping both my eyeballs intact. Hooray.

It's a little girl, curled into a ball on the ground, weeping. Her hood is obscuring her face for me to see. It's ripped open in several places; probably the result of an unfortunate encounter with thorns. "Kid, are you okay? What the hell are you doing out here alone? Where are your parents?" I say to the bundle at my feet, kneeling to inspect any injuries. Briefly I wonder whether she's run away from home. What is my mind doing? She's a little young for that, hopefully.

She scrambles to sit up and the hood falls to her shoulders, revealing flushed, tear-stained cheeks. The girl could be maybe nine years old. I know the look she's giving me; I could recognize it anywhere. It's the look of someone who's lost and alone and petrified.

When she talks, it's like a string of silver in the fall wind. "Mama's in the sky."

My features soften at once with newfound camaraderie for this girl. I can join with her fear as if it were my own; involuntarily, yes, but desperate times call for desperate measures. "And your dad?" I ask quietly, offering her a hand, even though I'm afraid I already know the answer.

"Papa is lost," she replies.

As I'm helping her to her feet, she stumbles and falls back on the ground, biting her lip and holding her ankle.

"Probably sprained it," I mutter to myself. Well, there's obviously only one thing to do. "Where do you live, sweetie? We need to take a look at this, alright?"

"But papa-"

"First things first," I scold, pointing my index finger at her in a no-no gesture, and kneel. "Now hop on." It takes her a moment as she contemplates my trustworthiness, but I wait patiently until the girl's tiny hands lock around my neck from behind and then hook my arms around each of her legs. "Where to, princess?"

She chuckles - a doorbell ringing as a guest walks through the door to a hearth - and points to the west, if my survival skills haven't rusted yet. "I'm no princess. My name's Grace."

"Well, Grace, my name is Emma and you look like a princess, and princesses deserve special treatment. I wouldn't want your dad to send his guards after me for not bringing you home safe when we find him. I'm not a carriage, but from what I recall, people's backs are pretty damn comfortable," I lie. I don't recall anything. If anyone's ever held me like this, it's nothing but a tall tale today. Nonetheless, Grace doesn't need to know that.

"Alright then, my knight in shining armor," she smiles into my hair.

_Alright then, my knight in shining armor._

Huh, what a weird echo.

Every once in a while, the kid asks whether I need to rest. I decline each time, though it warms my heart somewhat. Children have a way of doing that, I see. Soon I'll be starting my own kindergarten, or so this peculiar world I've awakened to seems to be hell-bent on making me. Besides, why would I need to rest? Sure, I'm panting due to a shortage of oxygen by now, but she couldn't have run very far. I'd snuggle a cockroach for a glass of Coke, though.

"Emma?"

"Mmh?"

"Would you ever abandon your children?"

The question strikes me as a surprise until I connect the dots. Grace must thing her father has abandoned her. Well, to be brutally honest, the idea has occurred to me before, but again, the poor thing does not deserve such knowledge to be cast upon her. Who would want to leave this little angel, anyway? However, there's another part that doesn't quite fit. "I don't have any."

She pauses. "Really?"

"Yeah, really," I huff as I climb rather than walk up a steep slope, extra careful not to bump into anything lest we both get more than a sprained ankle. "Why? Is that strange?"

Grace adjusts herself on my back, tightening her grip on my neck, but not too much so as to not make me uncomfortable. For a moment she stays silent and I'm beginning to wonder if she fell asleep on my shoulder, but then she speaks. "You look like a mother."

Huh, that's something I wouldn't have expected to hear. A mother, me? The one who has to bite my tongue to keep from swearing around her, the one who would have rather slept through all of existence a mere few hours ago? Yeah, the job was written for me. "You must be mistaking me for someone with maternal instincts, kid," I mumble, chuckling humorlessly.

"What is a maternal instinct?"

"Oh, uh, well- That's the love a mother harbors for her child." I feel stupid explaining things I don't know the first thing about to her. It'll just confuse her more. Actually, I wonder whether I'm even close to being right. Somehow the sentence I uttered sounds to me like a textbook definition. Would I recognize a display of maternal instincts if I saw it happen before my own eyes? Probably not. I just know the words and some sort of connotation to go along with them that speaks nothing to me.

"Well, I'm not yours, you don't even know me and yet you're helping me," she muses.

"That's different."

"Is it? Mama would have done it too." Her chin bumps into my shoulder and she sighs exasperatedly as a sign of giving up this useless fight. "I don't understand."

Neither do I, kid. I remain silent.

We stumble upon a road so, with the princess' permission, we follow it. Soon the sound of a group of children playing reaches our ears. According to the hard periodical thuds, cries of "Pass the ball! Pass the ball!" and the shuffling of shoes across the ground, they must be playing soccer. The laughter and whistling gets louder until we reach the village itself. As I suspected, three boys and a girl are running around the square, using a well as the center point for their made up field, with a couple of branches and stones and even a rolled blanket separating the two fields. The air gets hotter as we pass an anvil where a blacksmith is forging an iron horseshoe with the help of a heavy-looking hammer. Ding. Ding. Ding. Sparks spread around with each hit, welcoming Grace home. Somewhere, a horse neighs in a stable, but other than that there's little noise in the background. I realize I like it more than the darkness I came from. One could feel less alone in this place, if they wanted to.

Grace points to a hovel around the corner. "There," she says. Frankly, the house looks like it'll fall apart any minute. Nothing princess-like about it from the outside. Who am I to judge, though? It's as good a place as any to lay your head down.

"Grace! Oh gods, Grace! There you are!"

I spin around to see a man and a woman approaching us hastily. "You know them?"

"Uhhh..."

"Sebastian and I were worried sick about you! What happened?" the woman exclaims, apparently entirely too fixated on the girl to notice my unholy presence. Judging by the pressure around my neck, Grace is not particularly excited to be back home just yet.

"Um, excuse me," I butt in, "Does she belong to you? I found her looking for her dad in the forest."

"Oh dear, it looks like we have a major misunderstanding on our hands. Excuse our manners; I'm Jane, and this is my husband Sebastian," the woman apologizes, gesturing towards herself and the man accordingly. "And I believe you've already acquainted yourself with Grace here. Come, our home is just around the corner; we'll explain when we get there. You too look like you could use a cup of my blueberry tea, child."

I flinch; I'm not used to being called that word in this word or the next. What sense does it make? Realization hits me that I'm no longer the oldest person in the worlds. The responsibility does not lie all on me anymore.

At least these folks' house is more homely. Sebastian scratches his trimmed dark beard bristling with grey hairs of age, starting a fire in the fireplace, as I explain how I met Grace after she injured herself in the woods and how I was bringing her home to take a look at the wound and then search for her father. Jane interrupts me then and despite my protests (which are pretty feeble anyway; I'm only trying to be polite, when in reality I'm thirsty as hell) sits a mug in front of me on the table. The beverage inside smells like marmalade, thick and sweet. Grace doesn't even touch hers; she's huddled on the chair with a stuffed rabbit that's made of various colorful types of fabric that don't go well together at all, making it look rather frightening to me, seeing as I'm not too fond of zombified animals. But she seems to like it, if the way she's holding it close while Sebastian wraps her ankle in a bandage is something to go by.

It turns out Grace wasn't lying; Jane and Sebastian have only accepted her as her own when her father disappeared. The thought seems unfathomable to me at first, but one look at Grace reveals there was no decision to be made.

"It's all because of that wretched Queen," Jane growls.

I choke a little on my tea. "'Scuse me?"

"The Evil Queen was the one who dragged Jefferson away. No doubt she used her mind tricks to get into his head somehow. Or her body. She'd do anything to get people to do her bidding; you have no idea what she's capable of." The fire stops crackling, or do my ears deceive me? It's as if the mere mention of something we said disrupted the peace of this home. I'm trying to wrap my head around this whole concept when Jane steps between me and my thoughts again. "It is quite obvious you're not from around here, child, so let me explain." Flinch. Do I wish for her to stop doing that or do I refuse to believe it? "The Evil Queen has ruled over this land ever since king Leopold's passing - no doubt her doing, too. She is a cruel and manipulative woman who won't stop at anything to destroy others' happiness. She paid Jefferson a visit recently, and I'm worried that's where the foul stench comes from, if you catch my drift."

Sebastian, who has been helping Grace groom Mr. Rabbit (or something)'s matted fur, suddenly slams his fist on the table, making the old wood cringe with me. "That's bull, Jane, and you know it. Even before the Queen, Jefferson's always been biting off more than he could chew with that blasted hat of his! Why, I wouldn't be surprised if he were drinking his sorry ass off somewhere in Westeros as we speak!"

I can feel myself growing pale as snow at how huge this man suddenly looks when anger's taken a hold of him and tense from head to toe in my seat.

"Don't talk that way about him in front of Grace!" Jane hisses way too late.

Grace's mug hits the floor and shatters to chunks, followed by Mr. Rabbit, who is forced to take an unintentional bath in blueberry. "He promised he would be home for our tea party!" the girl cries. Then everything happens too fast. She leaps from her chair in a motion so sudden the chair falls over and a leg breaks off. Jane watches in horror, unable to react in time, as Grace accidentally bumps into her, stumbles and runs out the door with a fresh flow of tears running down her cheeks. Sebastian reaches out to grab her on her way out and misses.

The only thing I do is yell "Kid!" standing awkwardly on the spot.

"I'll go after her," Sebastian mumbles and in just four words he's back to the father I saw him to be.

I know better. "You've done enough already!" I stare him down. His jaw clenches along with his fists, but the man makes no other move, painfully aware of his mistake. I give Jane an apologetic glance and storm out the still open door.

I follow the same path. The anvil's gotten cold. The children are playing no more. All that remains is an unfinished horseshoe and a dirty blanket by the wishing well. How hard can it be to catch a limping child?

I run deep into the forest where I think I hear the sound of footsteps coming from, deeper than the two of us have been before, calling out her name, but there is no answer. No answer but still cries echoing throughout this realm, where it gets thicker and darker with each step forward. "Grace!"

There's something else, and right here, right now, in terrifies me more than howls of any savage animal.

Music.

"Grace!"

Four notes repeated two times, then replaced by another set of four notes. Each note rings twice in my ears, for several seconds the first time; then just for a split of one. No matter what direction I run, it still seems to be pursuing me from behind.

I can't see the sky anymore. I don't know what time it is. I don't know how long I've been here. All I know is that I need to find Grace, and the music.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

The melody soothes as it rings in my head like a single bell above a crib to sing the dead boy's lullaby, relentless, never stopping until its goal has been achieved. Sleep, Emma. Sleep and you will wake up home, back where you're supposed to be. In the throat of the lion.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

My throat burns from all the heavy breathing I've done. I walk on wobbly legs through this jungle, looking for Grace, my Grace, as the trees close in on me, surround me, choke the life out of me. With a soundless scream I fall to my knees.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

To my horror, I can feel something warm pooling in the corners of my eyes. I press the pads of my fingers to my cheek and then hold them in front of me. They're covered in water. I know what they are; tears. But why? I'm not sad. Or am I? I can identify the feeling of being terrified, that's for sure. I just don't remember ever being sad before. Disgruntled and irritated, certainly, but not sad.

Yet I'm crying.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

Somewhere, the child is still crying with me.

The tear I picked up trickles down into my palm, clear as crystal. Fascinating, how such a common little thing can be so indisputably pure. I'd like to wish that came from my heart, I would. It appears I'm right because as soon as I ponder the thought, the drop starts to darken with an obsidian puff of smoke. Now that's definitely more like my heart. And why not? Did I not come from the darkness?

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun!_

The drop becomes a bee, and then there are two, and I'm not sure whether I'm seeing things in my blurry vision. They multiply into a swarm of buzzing bees that drown my lullaby and the cries until the notes are with me no more and the only thing I have left to hold onto is a handle in the shape of an apple. I look around for help, some source of all this, some sense to all this, but I'm alone.

I always have been, haven't I?

The key rises in my hand. I struggle to hold it down. I can't. I'm not done yet. I have to find Grace. Don't take me away. I haven't found Grace. Don't take me-

There is no lullaby to put me to sleep, just a violent burst of light to burn my insides as if I were no more than a ghost haunting these woods as I choke and gasp and writhe and cry, helplessly trying to escape the inevitable.

Don't make me stop running.

When was the last time I took a breath?

The corners of my line of sight grow fuzzy and dark, darker than the darkest tree bark. In milliseconds it spreads inward.

I've lost them.

But I could swear there was a star shining in the distance when I fell into the murky abyss of nothing.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun..._


	3. Intermezzo: Mom

**Intermezzo 2 ½ - Mom**

It's been one week since we lost you to the darkness. Henry still hasn't left his chambers. As if our sorrow wasn't painful enough, the Queen hasn't exactly been making it easy for us to cope. She refuses to acknowledge any of my efforts to bring you back, but please, believe that your father and I are doing our very best, unlike her, who spends her days spewing her poison around until we're blade to blade and James has to force us apart- I shouldn't be telling you this. I'm sorry. I've promised many times I would remain civil in her presence. If my prayers have reached you, please accept my apologies.

I've been thinking about paying you a visit in your prison myself. He can't prevent me from that. If I am destined to watch you become this person, then I should at least get front row seats.

Seeing - or rather not seeing - Henry these past few days, I wonder, should we have refused? I wish you could tell me your opinion, but you won't. You don't even know who I am. Dark forces have torn us apart once and now they're doing it again. This is always going to be our life, isn't it? Taking turns finding each other. What memories should we write? What fate should we build? In the end, you're going to despise us one way or the other.

There's a storm coming. Ominous and reeking of evil. Like that time you saved us all when you broke the curse. Only this storm is stronger and we can't send it away with a gust of wind like we used to. Ironic, isn't it? In our real world, magic can't help us.

Emma, I - we - miss you so much. I realize we haven't always been fair, but seeing you wander so lost and alone, I now know how much you needed that one bit of light in your life to guide you. We tried to take it away from you and Henry. I am so, so sorry. Regina has suggested we return to our original state of being so that I and James don't have to fall victims to your rage as well when the time comes. I got into a swordfight with her for that.

You don't remember this, but you came to me once, during a ceasefire. You asked me what it takes to be a mother. I told you - hah - I told you you always needed to do what was best for your children. I was so blind, not realizing you were making a point and it went right over my head. Yet what Grace told you today - if you were you, you would have smiled. Just the fact that you didn't tells me the answer to what I've been meaning to ask: Are you still there?

Regina is taking care of Applejack for you. We've cleared a spot for her in our stables. Regina won't allow anyone else (besides Henry, if he wanted to, I'm sure) near her and Applejack doesn't run around the fields like she used to. I think even the horse senses how much things have changed. She's always lying in the shadow, waiting for you to come home, feed her apples and take her out for a ride.

We're all waiting for you to - home.,,

Oh gr- now I'm crying, even thou- I have no right to===

Emma === =

please come hom-...,,,,=== please

I don't want to .,,see,====,,, suffer like this;;

Emma, this is your father.

I was wrong.


	4. Wolf's Den

**Author's Note:** The time has come for me to pull the rating up a notch. Please be warned as there is a bit of gore in this chapter and everybody wants to talk about their feelings. The femslash is on its way, too. I apologize for the length of this chapter. This has to be hands down the longest chapter of everything I have ever written and I'm so glad I've finally finished it. Well, I hope you enjoy it and if you do (or even if you don't, that's entirely up to you), please kindly leave a review at the end. It would make my day. :)

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**Chapter 3: Wolf's Den**

The touch on my face is as soft as cloud in the sky I wish to see. It moves from the bridge of my nose, tracing a semicircle under my eye, and then repeats the motion on the other side. It brushes against my eyelashes, leaves one to break loose and fall. This would be a good time for a wish, if the touch had any, but either it doesn't or the lash escapes its attention. Instead it caresses my cheek with tenderness I have never known as it continues to wipe dry tears off my face. Like the first time, I almost don't want to let go of this illusion, this darkness that soothes me so lovingly. But then I realize I'm alone in here.

My eyes snap open.

It's a woman roughly my age and she looks as if she fell out of a book of fairytales. Not the way she's dressed or her posture - though I must admit it is quite princess-like indeed - but her expression, the way it alone speaks epic stories of hope and adventure as it gazes upon me with a message of peace and a little bit of well-intentioned pity. Her features are elegant and delicate despite the barbarian fur coat on her shoulders. Skin pale as snow, lips red as blood, locks darker than winter's midnight.

It's the latter that makes me jump to my feet and let my palm become filled with the buzzing of a thousand bees as the keyblade I wield forces her to step back in warning with my solemn permission. "What are you doing?"

Patience rules this woman's journeys. It is with patience that she raises her hands in a gesture of surrender. With patience she tilts her head to the side, examining the heartless creature in front of her as if she thought I do have a heart anyway somewhere underneath this thick shell. She waits for me to lower my weapon and I never do.

"You really don't remember me," she says and it comes out half as a question and half as a broken, crippled statement.

"Should I?" I question. The bees buzz and vibrate in the energy of the metal key.

The stranger chuckles, but her eyebrows knit together and tiny wrinkles appear around the corners of her eyes. Nothing escapes me.

"You should, but you are no longer you."

My resolve wavers along with the key. Who is this woman to tell me who I am and who I am not? I am me, the tool that surfaced in the darkness. "Do you know something?"

"Yes," she admits, and a surge of regret of unknown origins rushes through me as the tears start to well. "But that is something you have to find out for yourself. Whichever road you take, I hope you'll find the answers you seek."

I am so focused on trying to read her, my breath quickening at the prospect of a resolution, that I barely notice the door to the next floor opening wide until she takes another step back, blinks away her tears and runs right through into the next world without giving me a chance to catch up.

"No! Wait!"

I should probably think about the consequences of my actions. Instead I run right after her on impulse; right into the light, after the only trace of belonging I've ever had.

I appear in a house full of people, yet no one notices my unconventional entrance; everyone's staring ahead, at the one person with the right to speak. People are sitting on benches, at tables with beer or wine or both, some are standing huddled close to the walls. I note that the windows are all barricaded. I look everywhere for signs of the brunette woman I was chasing seconds ago, but there is scarce to no movement from the crowd.

Some wield bows strapped to their backs. Others are gripping the hilts of their swords at their hips. For some there's only the tip of a dagger peeking out of their boots. At first glance, however, one can tell this isn't just any ordinary townsfolk; most of them, safe for the children, are in some way armed.

What the hell kind of card picked this place? I run through all I have in search of the one that's missing. It's the one with the pawprint I can't seem to find.

"There is no purpose behind another hunt! You will only exhaust yourself before tomorrow's labors. The wolf is long gone, away amongst his savage beast friends."

The woman who is the center of attention has spoken. She is old, way past her prime, no doubt a grandmother. She's watching everyone through her spectacles, freezing all in place.

"Then we kill all the beasts and our problems will be solved!" someone yells from somewhere in the group and several others rise up to cheer for them.

"Fools! Even if a miracle happened and you survived the encounter, soon other beasts would come to take the pack's place! Your efforts would have been in vain!" Her voice stuns all, like a thunder in the desert. She speaks from experience and a troubled heart, I can tell. Her worry has that tint of desperation to it that it has when people know what awaits those who divert off the beaten path.

Hushed whispers echo through the crowd. 'You've seen her scars,' they say. 'She's warned us last time too.' 'Maybe the wolf won't return next month.'

"I'll get rid of the wolf for you for good!"

Oh my god. Please tell me I did not just hear that. I skim through the villagers' heads and it takes just a second for the uncomfortably long shorts to catch my attention once I've heard where the voice came from. What is he, fucking stupid? You don't even know what they're talking about! "Hah! Right, kid. You come back when you grow a pair," I yell back at him.

I can see his eyes glimmer with surprise, then a spark of happiness - presumably at our reunion - then a flash of disappointment and anger. What the hell are you doing, Emma?

Saving your god damn sorry ass, that's what I'm doing.

"Hey! I've fought worse monsters!"

"Prove it, chicken little."

Sora summons his keyblade - much to the shock of the locals - and he's just about ready to lunge at me and prove a point when Granny there interrupts us. "Hey, if you two have a score to settle, be dears and do it outside. We have enough dead of our own as it is."

"Ready when you are," I announce and head towards the door nonchalantly, fully sure a pair of feet will be following me soon enough.

As soon as the wooden door shuts behind us, Sora tackles me from behind, causing both of us to land in a carpet of snow. Snow? Has an entire season passed since I looked for Grace? Or is this really another world? I am so confused. Could I even find her here if I tried?

"What did you do that for? I could take it down!"

"I can picture you being able to do one thing - lose your head," I snap and spin around. To my astonishment, the boy is still holding the keyblade. Does he actually yearn to pick a fight with me? I should have made my point clearer. Reluctantly, I summon my own skeleton in a swarm of bees.

We stand there for a while - me upright with one hand carrying the blade and the other just hovering outside my pocket - him holding his in a firm two-handed grasp, hunched over forwards, bristling with determination. The only piece of the puzzle missing in the atmosphere is a stray tumbleweed.

What I don't in any way see coming is Sora's keyblade vanishing into thin air as he bends over - wait, what is he doing, looking for something in the snow? - and swiftly throws a thick snowball right in my face before I can react. "Take that!"

"Oh, now it's on, kid." I throw the keyblade into oblivion and duck just in time for the ball to miss my head. The snow cools down the skin between my life and heart lines as I plot my revenge, molding my own counterattack. Someone once told me that if I look closely, I can see the lines forming an M, and that the M stands for Mother Mary looking after me from the heavens. Good thing I don't believe in that nonsense, but it does seem like luck is on my side because my retaliation meets Sora's forehead and not in the 'howdy, neighbor' way. It's more of a 'you came to the wrong neighborhood, motherfucker' kind of hit and I grin and pump my fist in the air at my success as he whines and shakes his head to get the snowflakes off.

We end up running off to who knows where as our positions shift from stump to hill. At one point Sora tries to set up a snow fort, but the following bombardment from my side takes quick care of that (because that just wouldn't be fair). I don't know who surrenders first (fine, I do, it's me, but shh), but eventually the two of us lie side by side, soaked to the bone and gasping for air and when we do, we burst into laughter again.

I honestly don't know how we've survived; I'm so wet I'll probably grow moss on my back and the kid's legs are not even protected by anything up to his knees. There's water in my boots and tiny brooks trickle down my face, but I'm so past giving a flying damn it's strangely liberating. We're both undoubtedly going to be sick and we couldn't care less. If anything - he started it! Laughter erupts in my throat anew upon the thought. We should be cold, but we're really not. The energy we've given into this juvenile fight has created a force field of warmth around us.

We have to settle down at some point, much to our disappointment, and realization dawns on me. We don't know where we are, we're probably going to freeze to death and there's a giant wolf-like beast on the prowl.

If that doesn't ruin the mood, I don't know what does.

"We need to find shelter," I remark, standing up and brushing beads of snow off my jacket and jeans to little avail. "What are you doing here, anyway? I didn't see you anywhere after we left the island."

Sora, on the other hand, takes his time composing himself, like he has all the time in the world. I suppose in a way he does. "That's what I've been meaning to ask you. We should have ended up in the same place, but... I guess something screwed up," he grins. Thank you, Captain Obvious. Here, accept this imaginary rock as a token of my gratitude.

"Nothing fazes you, does it?"

"Nope! Now help me gather some wood," he beams and already he's running off to somewhere - oh god, is he throwing that thing up in the - oh. Efficient.

"What for?"

"Fire, duh!"

I more or less just tag along, trying to figure out what the hell is going on in this kid's head. How are we going to start a fire in what appears to be the Arctic circle? That's not what I meant by shelter, anyway. Showers of snow and branches land on our heads one by one and while I'm mostly too busy trying not to get my eyes poked out, Sora keeps throwing what he can salvage onto one big pile. I'm afraid soon we'll get arrested and executed for intentional deforestation by keyblade cutting.

When he comes to the conclusion we've gathered enough, he stands in front of the pile and holds the keyblade in front of him dramatically. I must say I'm quite curious to see what mumbo jumbo he'll come up with, and he'd better do it fast because by now I have to grit my teeth to stop them from clicking. Sora mumbles something inaudible and a flow of fire springs from the tip of his keyblade, transforming the whole pile into a ball of fire. The snow within a sizeable circular radius melts almost instantly and vaporizes into a cloud of steam.

"Damn," I cough as I inhale more water than oxygen. My eyes and ears and skin must all be playing tricks on me at once. "That I did not see coming."

"You can do it too, silly."

"Thanks, but I'd rather not. I don't have latent pyromaniacal tendencies."

Sora shrugs and sits down by our makeshift fireplace. He takes off his gloves and rubs his hands together for warmth, scooting a little closer, before extending them towards the source. Can't say that doesn't look appealing, so I follow his example. "You're not worried we're sitting here like a meaty meal for the beast?"

"Are you always this serious?" Sora whines, giving me an expression of utmost annoyance.

"When there's a reason to be, which there is if those people are to be trusted," I defend. Being on some wolf's menu wasn't exactly on my to-do list today.

"If you believe that, then you also have to believe that the wolf isn't around these parts anymore. I think you're just finding excuses," he mutters the last part in a whisper.

"Excuse me? Am not!"

"That fight before was the only time I saw you loosen up a little. I mean, sure, not knowing who you are can get on your nerves, but look at me; I don't remember much either, but I don't have to be so bitter about it. What can you possibly feel that prevents you from having fun?"

Not every person's ultimate goal in life is to have fun, kid, I think, but stop myself before giving voice to the retort. What do I feel? Empty, that's what it is. I have no real memories, just vague connections at the back of my mind that allow me to function on a human level, but nothing of importance. Nothing to give any substance to anything I've done. I had my chance to form some with Grace, and I blew it completely. Maybe this is, ultimately, what I am, what I've been searching for. Maybe when we're stripped of all our memories, all that remains is the core of who we are - Sora, a hyperactive, cheerful, adventurous boy, and me, a tumbling, distrustful mess of confusion. There's hate and malice, too. It runs somewhere deep. Whom or what for, I don't know. Essentially, it all comes down to one emotion.

"Hurt," I reply. A while must have passed while I was lost in thought because Sora looks puzzled at first, so I clarify. "I feel hurt."

He's gotten this out of me somehow and it doesn't feel right. Why did I expose myself like that to this kid? A wave of vulnerability washes over me, and I hug my knees and set my chin on them, curled into a ball to protect me from what no physical boundaries can hold back.

I question my own motives. Am I really incapable of trusting the one person who's stood by me in here with something so plain?

Closing my eyes, I will the fire to burn me away. Maybe it's because he's so young. Children shouldn't know of the hardships and adversities of life such as hurt or hatred. They should be spared of this nonsense.

They should, but usually that's not the case.

Sora's hand tentatively settles on my jacket-clad shoulder, as if he were afraid he'd break me. I must be pathetic if that's the outcome of this conversation.

"But that's good. Don't you see?"

"What?" I wonder, raising my head to look at the boy. I'm met with a display of compassion I've done nothing to deserve. Something heavy sinks in my chest.

"Hurt is good. It means you have people that you love. If your memories have been taken away and replaced by hurt, it means there's still a way to get them back. It's the same connection to what you cherished, it's just different from what you're used to."

I stare at him in confusion. How could that be the same thing? Pain and reality have nothing in common. Oh, wait...

"I feel it too, but I hold onto the hurt. If I keep it in my heart, someday, I will be able to trade it in for the memories I've lost. And if you feel a lot of it, that just means there's that much more love waiting for you out there, and your heart's refusing to let it go. It's a way for it to tell you you're missing something that's important to you, you just don't know it. Isn't surviving a little pain worth the happiness on the other side?" he smiles and elbows my arm, shifting me out of balance, so I have to lean on the ground for support.

"But what if that's all there is? What if the hurt is hiding only memories of hurt?" I ask; it is a legitimate concern. No-one's memories are composed of sheer joy. It just doesn't happen, as I'm sure Sora knows.

He shakes his head vigorously. "Nuh-uh. If that were true, your heart would let it go. It wouldn't need it and you wouldn't feel anything at all."

The question is, is hurt better than nothing at all? Gotta love how he can turn everything upside down, though. After this little soliloquy, I'm sure Sora has loads of friends waiting for him to find them.

And he can feel the pain too.

Does that mean that maybe, there is somebody out there, waiting for me to come home? Are they worried about me? I wouldn't want them to. I'm not in danger, after all.

I shove Sora, catching him by surprise, and watch him fall over with a thud. "Smartass."

He just giggles as he scrambles to his feet and resumes accompanying me by the fire. "You know it."

"Do you remember something about that friend you're looking for?" The question slips out of my mouth without me filtering any of it. I'm getting ready to apologize for bringing up the topic, but Sora doesn't seem to mind.

He nods. "There's this girl I swore to protect back home. I can't remember her name, but I remember the promise I made."

_This will protect you when I no longer can._

Someone to protect, huh? I wonder if I have someone like that, or, god forbid, I hold that spot in someone else's life. No, that doesn't seem right. It must be the first. It sounds natural, the thought of me shielding someone from harm, like I attempted to do with Grace. I just hope I don't always make it worse.

What happened to her, I wonder?

"A girl, huh?" I raise an eyebrow at him. "You go, tiger."

I have to bite my lip in order to stifle a giggle at the rising redness creeping up his cheeks.

"That's not what this is about at all!"

In fact, I'm trying so hard I accidentally snort. Totally worth it, though! The kid's going through his first crush, how cute. And all the more reason for me to harass him about it.

"I'm sure you have someone like that too, so stop making fun of me!"

Oh, I don't know about that. I take a minute to entertain the thought. Would I even want someone in my life like that? No, not really... Well, maybe a girl too. I mean, obviously not a girl, but, um, ew, I mean uh, like a woman, I could deal with that, maybe, once. I mean I do have needs and all...

"Ahh, you're blushing! So there is someone!"

"Shut it, Sora! You know I can't remember."

"But you're obviously in luuuuuurve! Emma and someone sitting in a tree, K-I-"

"You're just trying to change the subject!"

"S-S-I-N-G!"

"Get off!"

Oh god, this is going to be a long night.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

I clamp my hand over his mouth to shut him up for a moment and don't move a muscle. I'm sure there was something in the air. Four notes, each repeating itself two times, calming, soothing, and oh so out of place right now in this snowy forest. "Can you hear that?"

Sora frowns and listens intently with me for a few seconds before pushing my hand away. The fire crackles. Hot sparks dance around the charred wood. An owl hoots in the distance together with a quiet orchestra of field crickets. "Hear what? Nothing's happening. Well, I'm dead on my feet, so I'm gonna nap while you figure this out."

I stay alert, looking for a sign of distress in the silence of the night. Sora's right. Nothing is there. But I could have sworn...

I would point out in no uncertain terms that I don't approve of his ignorance of the need for us to keep watch, but I realize it would be a meaningless effort. He'd just say there's no need for one. Nothing's going to hurt us while we sleep. What planet am I from to suggest otherwise? Besides, it appears he's already dead to the world. With a resigned shake of my head, I cross my arms behind it and lie down by the fire. I'll keep myself busy looking for hidden messages in the stars, because why not? Maybe they'll tell me something I don't know.

Except the sky is all clouded, not one star on the horizon. So much for that.

Thinking of you, wherever you are. I have decided to step forward. Who knows, maybe starting a new journey won't be so hard, or maybe it's already begun. I've learned there are many worlds out there, but they all share the same sky.

In one of those worlds, I'll find you.

_I'll always find you._

There's the disruptive sound of cloth sliding against grass that tugs me violently from my sleep. Shit, I dozed off. Lucky my throat hasn't been ripped out yet. My eyes pop open to see a hooded figure standing on the other side of the fire, shivering as beads of melting snow stumble down their cape and form a puddle at their feet. I sit up with a jerk, willing my pupils to adjust to the dimming light of the now only small fire in the night.

The figure gasps and crosses its arm over its chest, cocooning itself in the cape. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I just wanted to warm myself up."

I can see her face. Several locks of wavy brown hair have escaped the comfort of her hood. She glances my way like a doe, shy and helpless in the face of a hunter, and seems to shrink in size the longer I stare at her. My gaze lands on her leg and I note that she is wounded. Someone's already taken care of that, however; I can see the ruffled end of a bandage peeking out from around her calf. "It's okay, I'm not gonna hurt you," is the only thing I can bring myself to utter at the moment, knowing the reassurance she needs right now lies somewhere in those words. I walk over to her slowly as to not startle her more than she already is. "It's okay. What's your name? What's going on? Why are you out here in the cold in the middle of the night?" I mentally slap myself for asking this many questions at once. Probably not the best move.

"Everybody calls me Red Riding Hood. Just Red, for short," she mumbles and gives me a coy smile, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. No, there's terror and turmoil instead. She hesitates for a moment. "I got lost running from the wolf. It gave me this," she points to the wound.

"And you escaped after that? That's impressive," I muse.

Sora groans on his spot on the ground. "What's all this noise about? Oh, hello," he blinks, partly from surprise at our new campmate and partly from the sudden awakening. "Wait, did you say the wolf? The wolf is still here?"

She gazes in the crimson of the fire, the only remaining trace of sun in this land, with emptiness I find hard to fathom. It sends a foreign chill down my spine. "It has returned," she says.

Sora is on his feet in no time, already swinging the keyblade in the air. "Oh yeah! Let's go kill it!" Thirsty for murder and social justice. I'm not sure whether I approve of not, but gotta hand it to him, this kid's got spirit.

"It deserves to die," Red says.

"Hold your horses, can't we at least wait until morning? We won't even see it in the dark," I panic. Quite frankly, I just don't want to go around hunting wolves, but Sora's determination seems to have come from the fiery pits of hell itself. I can't just leave the kid alone, can I? What I can do is kick some sense into him every once in a while.

And to be completely honest, something about this Red just seems awfully off. She hasn't taken her eyes off the fire and all of a sudden there's an internal blackness in the orbs I dare not face.

"You do what you want, I'm going after it!"

Just when I start to think I'll have to give him a good smack in the head to make him stay, Red speaks up again. "The Queen's sent an entire party to hunt it down at the crack of dawn. It's just a few hours. Leave it to them."

"But what if it kills someone tonight? We have to stop it while we can," Sora objects.

"You won't catch it!"

Both me and Sora freeze on the spot at the unforeseen fierceness. This is a woman who won't be ignored, and she most definitely won't make you a sandwich - during those bare few seconds that she becomes almost... feral. It haunts me how someone manages to look so mortified and so murderous at once.

It's strange, trusting one half of a person so fully but not the other. Sora's finally acquiesced, but neither of us feels like going to sleep again, so instead we lie in awkward silence. Sora rekindled the fire. I'm watching her and she knows I'm watching her. It's good that she does, too. She won't try anything. At the same time, it baffles me to try and figure her out. I don't believe her injury story one bit. She couldn't run fast enough and a wolf wouldn't just let its dinner be on its merry way. Where did she get the bandage? I doubt she carries some spare in the depths of her cloak. The whole tale stinks.

Yet she doesn't look dangerous. If anything, Red is the one who's threatened here. She keeps fidgeting, her eyes darting from place to place, most often at the starless sky. She is anticipating something and that something is unpleasant.

I think Sora's dozed off again. Christ, the kid won't be disturbed by anything. But I appreciate the lord of sleep for taking him again; it gives me an opportunity. I scoot over to Red. "So, spill. What's going on? And I mean really going on," I whisper quietly enough not to wake Sora.

"What would you do if you only had one day to live?"

This conversation is taking a dreaded turn. What a way to digress. "I'm sorry?"

"Please, just... tell me." She looks me straight in the eye for the first time and even though we've, uninvited, invaded each other's personal space considerably, it feels as if she were far away, calling out to me from behind mountains and forests and seas. I could skip the distance in one step, I could. But do I want to? Her eyes are glazed over; they have that shimmering sheen to them that gives off the impression she's about to cry.

"I'm really not the best person to ask."

I could skip the distance, I could.

She terrifies me.

She intrigues me.

What in the world is she?

"You must have some dream, something you just can't go without doing," she says.

I suppose I do. I also suppose that's one of the things that got taken from me in this... castle. If I had memories, any memories, what would that dream be? Why do people even have dreams? Isn't it enough for us to get through the day doing what we want to do? No, there just has to be that one unreachable ideal none of us will ever achieve, and if yes, another one will rise up to fill its place. The human race is genetically programmed to summon failure upon itself in life. In here, I don't have a dream, and I'm happy. At least I think being like this is being happy.

Right?

"I would... find someone."

Where did that come from? My mind is like a labyrinth someone else designed and now I'm stuck in it. Sometimes the words I say don't match with what I think up here. Ugh. I rub my temples. What else could speak for me but my head?

My heart, Sora would say.

Such a naïve assumption. "And you?"

"I would spend it apologizing to everyone I have ever hurt. Believe me, it's quite a list," Red half-sobs, half-chuckles. A miserable sight.

"Oh, I find that hard to believe. You don't look like someone who's hurt anyone so badly they wouldn't have forgiven you eons ago."

"Looks can be deceiving."

I'm not good with words; I believe that's pretty self-evident. If I replied, I would only make things worse. Should I comfort her or should I be wary of her? I'm conflicted.

Go with what your heart tells you, Sora would say.

I wrap my arm around her and nod for her to rest her head on my shoulder. "There's only so much forgiveness that has to be earned. The rest is automatic."

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

They say dreams are just memories of another life. I know better; shells like me have no other lives. Why, I'd be lucky to have one at all. Still, tonight I dream of a better story, or so it seems. I'm the hero of it, but I'm very different from the me my consciousness awakes to. I'm not empty. I feel.

I'm in a field of flowers of all the colors of the rainbow; red tulips, purple violets, blue bell-flowers, white and yellow daisies, all sharing the same emerald womb. No one and nothing disturbs the scenery, except... columns. Ionian columns. Disintegrating under the pressure of time, they scar the field at random, without any system or shape to form, like freckles on a boy's face. Some are bare for all the world to see; some stand embraced and entangled in ivy, looming over me in my dreamy haze.

I spot a butterfly in the distance. Even though it's daytime, it shines brighter than the sun. The message imprisoned in paper it's carrying casts a sole shadow. It circles me several times, humming a familiar music box tune.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

Gradually, the circles become shorter and narrower in contrast to the music that slows to a melancholic whistle.

_Dun. Dun, dun..._

I hold out my hand for the firefly to land on. It does and I smile; it's been a long time, friend. What is it you want me to see, little one?

Sans prelude, a gust of wind rises from the ground. In the blink of an eye, clouds hide the sky, entrapping and closing it off in darkness. The sky and I; we're meant to be together, but now we can't. We're both cast into shadow. Flowers wither like they would during the course of a year, but it all happens in fast-motion. Clouds become a thick veil of mist and from that mist, a string of shadow rises to capture the firefly in my palm. It runs over the bug, drowning it in its bubbly poison, forming a cocoon, a shell. That shell quickly grows a tail and feet and ugly pincers.

My lips turn downward, the smile fading. They part slightly, as if I muttered 'no' but I didn't. I don't try to shake it off; I gaze upon the creature, wondering how something so beautiful could have become so hideous, so calloused, so wrong. It makes thorny vines clench around my heart. Is there no hope for it left? That can't be true.

The scorpion's sting pierces the pad of my finger.

I never got to read the message in my dream.

"I found her! She has two accomplices!"

What time is it? Where have the columns and the flowers disappeared to? My first instinct is to look at my hand, but all there is is dirt, no blood. The sun is rising but at the same time, although it shouldn't belong here, the moon has not yet cowered behind the horizon. The full moon.

What's happening? The fire is no more. Cold runs through my veins instead of blood and makes it that much harder to get up. I'm pale and it's no wonder. Red is backing away slowly, staring in the direction of what woke me up - a soldier in black armor with black feathers decorating the pauldrons and the helmet. Might be raven, crow, or black swan, I don't know. He's motioning for someone to come here, and in an instant an entire squad appears, wielding spears and swords and javelins and silver crossbows. And a banner; a black banner laced with white stripes, or that's what it looks like from the distance when I've just woken up. I can't make out any details. Sora's grumbling and cursing in the childish way of his and then silver shines in his hands.

My heart pounds in my head. The one on the horse in the front, he's asking me something, but I block it out. The next thing I know, they're coming after us - no, not us, they want Red. Why would they want Red? They have no business with Red. The girl is stupefied into freezing on the spot. She's staring death in the eye.

No, I won't allow this. I can't stand idly by. As they approach, I summon my keyblade, and finally I think my hearing's back properly - because I seem to me unable to comprehend anything that's being said or done - but it's just the momentary swarm of bees. If they want to fulfill my wish of finding someone to protect sooner than intended, then so be it.

Sora yells something at me. I don't listen. One of them charges forward and he can consider himself lucky when all that meets my keyblade is the edge of his sword.

Get away from her.

_Get away from her._

These soldiers - they're well armed. They're meant to evoke fear and respect mingled with loathing. And I'll tell you they look evil enough to me.

They must be the Queen's hunting party. But why-

The next strike is aimed at me and I parry. I have no idea where that came from, but I have no problem with doing stuff I didn't know I could do if it means getting these blockheads to explain themselves, if nothing else.

There's only so much forgiveness that has to be earned. The rest is automatic. Was I right in saying that? Has Red gotten all the forgiveness she can and deserves?

"She is the wolf!"

And for a moment, the whole world stops. Me, keyblade in hand, last remaining traces of moonlight glistening on its tip. Sora, the same, an expression of utter shock and desperation and disbelief on his face, similar to mine, I suspect. The soldiers, waiting, waiting for as long as necessary.

I turn around. There's another one, one I've missed. He's tearing the crimson cape off her while she pleads for him not to. I stare with my mouth open as Red ceases to struggle. 'I'm sorry,' she mouths my way. The soldier lets go once the cape lies pooled at her feet, the red hood of her innocence pulled down to unmask the truth.

No, this can't be. She is human. Red is a friend. In this world or the next, Red Riding Hood is my friend.

A soul-rending howl shoots through the dawn. I watch in deaf silence of my own breathing as she drops to the ground on all fours. She - it - growls in pain; at what, they don't know. They don't think it can feel. But it can; exposure, misery and unmatched sorrow. It barks, whips its tail from side to side, and when its amber eyes reach me, I know it can't tell the difference. To the wolf, who is large enough to bite off a grown man's head from where it stands, we are all soldiers in black feathery armor.

A pandemonium breaks out. The only thing that runs through my head is the hood. Red changed when they took the hood. I need to get the hood. Don't ask me what I'm going to do with it; hell if I know. I'm lost in a maze of weapons and armor as countless men charge at the wolf. I can't tell one from another and I don't know whether what I just glimpsed was a paw or someone's intestines. The only thing that stands out is Sora (boy, that kid wouldn't get lost at a carnival) and he's trying to fight them off and for a second I envy his courage, or stupidity, or both, but then he tells me to go and I know we're thinking the same thing.

I shove my way through to where I last saw it and it's there, lying innocently in the snow as if it didn't matter, and I grab it and get set to jump head first into the chaos that's ensued, but something's holding me back - the keyblade.

The fucking keyblade is seriously starting to piss me off.

Oh no, it's not going to pull that shit again, is it? Why does it have to do this? No, I can't leave, Red has to have her hood, that's all that matters. Red and her hood and Sora fighting over there and I'm not sure whether he's with the soldiers or with Red but that hardly matters when there's blood soaking the snow with the same color of the cloth in my hand and someone's head just - oh god, I can't look.

Buzzing bees.

Red. The hood.

It deserves to die, she said. The wolf deserves to die.

But then I see it. I see it in slow-motion as if my brain wanted me to experience this moment on all possible levels. The Queen's banner breaks and collapses in the middle of the crowd. While the wolf's munching on another man's arm - while he's still alive, no less - and tossing him around to knock down some more, someone runs a spear through its throat.

Red whimpers.

I try to break free of the key's hold. I scream and reach out for nothing.

Then they pull it down from both sides forcefully, tearing the creature apart and sprinkling the ground with a fountain of blood, and the last ray of light vanishes from the beast's amber eyes.

That is the last thing I see before tears and darkness fill my vision as I scream 'no'.


	5. Intermezzo: Lover

**Intermezzo 2 - Lover**

Miss Swan.

Today I and Henry went for a walk in the orchard together for the first time in months. He hasn't spoken yet.

This is moronic. What else do I say? Nothing has changed. Nothing will be the same ever again. Ironically enough, in your absence, you are the only one the four of us still talk to. We tell Henry that by writing in this notebook, our words will somehow reach you in your prison, but several of your particularly bothersome traits have resurfaced in his personality since our arrival; for instance, he refuses to believe us without proof. And there is no proof. The whole idea is nonsense, we just don't call it that out loud. We call it magic. We call it hope. We call it all these dignified and majestic names so that in all their brightness, we won't be able to see the torturous truth behind the lies.

You're gone, Emma, and I doubt you're coming back.

Besides conversing with you, the castle has fallen into a bottomless abyss of silence. When your mother isn't weeping over your loss, she abuses every opportunity to pick a quarrel with me. Well, what do you know. I would be lying if I said I don't relish in taking my attention off of you by doing the same. It's a simple coping mechanism, yet surprisingly reliable. Not sufficient, but reliable.

I should be out there, helping you. I should be dragging you back from the darkness you're falling into, but I'm not. Not because when I was teetering on the edge, no one pulled me back - that is ancient history I will not delve into. No, I'm not there because... I can't bring myself to forgive you yet.

After all these years, I'm as selfish as I've ever been. Sometimes I wonder how you could have ever loved me. I don't doubt your honesty, no; I doubt your judgment, as, after all, I have always done.

Like that time you decided to teach me archery. Everything else I had taught you - how to ride a horse, how to use magic if you needed to, how to swing a sword - though I would be foolish to deny you were a natural on that one - how to lead an army, how to sing a lullaby. Archery was the one thing you had been drawn to on your own. I, on the other hand, had no interest in the art. You convinced me. I still think you only did it so you could boast about one-upping the Queen in some manner - as if having the upper hand in one skill were some kind of accomplishment.

Nonetheless, I let you teach me and I didn't regret it. I never told you what a good teacher you were. At first I couldn't even hold a bow correctly. You laughed in my face then, mimicking me as I had done so so many times before when you failed to follow my instructions. I suppose I deserved it.

But you guided me masterfully every step of the way. You stood next to me, wrapped your arm around me, and pushed my diaphragm in order to align my posture, but I found it hard to concentrate with you breathing down my neck. You were doing that on purpose, I knew. I can imagine how difficult it must have been for you to resist. You've always been rather... rash in more than one matter. I distinctly remember wanting to throw both the bow and you on the ground at one point and having my way with you right there. See, that's one of the things I would never have done at such an uncomfortable place before I met you. I used to be a lady; you tainted me, Miss Swan.

I didn't get a chance to do that, though, because you joined your arm with mine with the other still coiled under my ribs, and we held the bow as one, and you whispered "Focus," in my ear. You told me exactly when to breathe and when to relax. You waited until my fingers were sure around the wood without shaking. "Nothing but you and your target exists in this world. I don't exist in this world. I'm not touching you in this world." When my resolve got stronger, I could believe it. I could believe it was truly me aiming when I let go of the bowstring and shot the last remaining apple on my tree. And when your eyes followed the arrow and you beamed and you kissed me, I could believe you were proud of me. I could believe I hadn't done everything wrong unlike the last time I had been taught.

I should be out there, saving you like you once saved me.

After all, I'm the one who made you choose to give up your memory.

.

I'll wait here until the ink fades out.


	6. Dwarf Woodlands

**Chapter 4: Dwarf Woodlands**

I've awoken. If you're expecting any upward movements from me, however, you'll be waiting for a while. It's the first day all over again. I don't want to get up. The crimson cloth caresses my hand, reminding me ruthlessly of my failure. I express my gratitude by clutching it tighter in my fist, unconsciously or not.

Red died because of me.

Although never spoken out loud, the words form a heavy lump in my throat, making me grit my teeth to prevent myself from whimpering. It's true, it's gone and there's nothing to be done. Even if I had memories, I'm quite sure I would have never felt more useless in my entire life. Images flash before my closed eyes. Most of them consist of various shades of the color red. Crimson. Ruby. And banners, lots of banners. I know how the bull feels now. They ran the spear through her like she was air-

Screw this, I suppose seeing isn't that bad. Grunting, I pull myself up and glare at the hood I'm holding.

I should have done something.

"Poor lonely Miss Swan; striving so desperately to forget you have forgotten you're starting to remember."

Forcibly I tear my gaze away from the trip to my new messed up memories to this newcomer. What even is this chamber, visiting hours? I stare dumbly at the man - or is he? - in the cloak (and what is this deep-seated obsession with cloaks?) blocking my path to the next door promising turmoil and an inner battle for whatever it is that I am. His skin is the first thing to catch my attention; swampy green, scaly and slimy, more imp-like rather than humanlike. I'm used to werewolves and giant keys but not demons. The sight frightens me and I assume a defensive stance as the skeleton keyblade materializes in my grip milliseconds before I will it to.

"Not here, of course," the man-imp continues, seemingly unfazed by the fact I drew a weapon in his face, tapping his temple. "Here, dearie." I follow the path of the invisible line stemming from his index finger to find it pointing at the left side of my chest, where my breast pocket is.

"What pride parade did you come from?" I hiss, subconsciously reaching for the collar of my jacket.

"I'm not your enemy, Miss Swan. Kindly drop the tough girl act so I can explain."

I hesitate for a moment, side-stepping on the spot. Anyone could say they're my friend. He isn't; he's saying he is not my enemy. Should that make me more cautious or more trustful of him? In any case, any answers at all sound fair. I can decide how much of it is bullshit later, when I've absorbed it. The man-imp is waiting patiently, the tips of his fingers connected in front of his face like the judge during your alibi. He isn't smiling, but he's not frowning either. His features remain motionless except for the brief flickers of light on lizard skin.

Finally, I relent, leaving the keyblade to dissipate into a puff of black smoke, the kind of smoke that would linger in the air after burning a swarm of a thousand bees.

He looks pleased then. "You've been so focused on retrieving your memories you haven't stopped to consider the option you might have given them up willingly, haven't you?"

Beach - Sora - forest - Grace - chamber - snow - Red. He's right, I haven't. And the more I think about it, the more I realize there's only one reason for why I would do such a thing, provided that I was the same me I am now - pain. Was the pain so great I would run from it like this? No, that's not possible. Or is it? I don't understand. I'm better than that. That's not who I am...

Except, as much as I want to deny it, that's all I've been doing since I came to this castle. Running from one prison cell to another, one nightmare to the next, hoping the next one strikes a little farther from home.

"The problem is, your memories shape much more of you than you realize, dearie. With them, you lost your purpose, and with your purpose, your will. Unfortunately you failed to take into consideration the fact that no deed can ever be undone, and that all magic comes with a price. Although you might not realize how much you have forfeited, your heart does; that's why it, in the form of the keyblade you wield so fearlessly, keeps dragging you through all these worlds.

True memories can never be erased; they still exist, buried deep inside you, locked away, shut out in a prison within a prison, where they lie in heavy slumber, awaiting an awakening of their own. To put it simply, half of you is still dreaming. That's not good for the soul, no no. Your soul is sick, Miss Swan."

All this talk of hearts and memories and magic - magic? - it's getting to me. I don't believe in magic; nonetheless, maybe I did. Maybe it's the reason I'm in here. I have so many questions to ask, ranging from a simple who are you freak across why should I trust you to what is the meaning of life; they're floating around in my head like a ferris wheel, spinning and spinning and spinning and falling and suddenly I feel like breaking down. This is too much. How am I supposed to take in all this new knowledge, let alone judge its worth? Am I a coward, then? Is that what the verdict is? Does my heart have to do all the work I refused?

Ultimately, when you are faced with too many choices in too little time, your instinct - heart? - must be the one to pick. Otherwise I'm not sure I can explain the questions that eventually flee my lips.

"Did you know me? Can you tell me who I am?"

A slow shake of his head is my answer. His brown curls sway from side to side with the motion. "I am an acquaintance. No more, no less."

"So you do know me in some way, even if you don't hold every detail to my previous life. You can tell me that."

We stay quiet and still for a while; a hunter in a savannah. The problem is, I don't know which one of us it is. I'm about to find out; his lips form a thin pursed line past which there's no passing, and I feel a rush of rage surge through me. It fills my body from every tensing muscle through every fingernail that digs deep into my clenched fist; it runs like a wild river, pummeling every nerve, every vein along the way, making my blood boil and bubble underneath the lid in a torrential downpour of perfectly concentrated madness, all for one simple reason. The red of Red's hood clashes with the marble, forgotten.

He knows who I am but refuses to speak of it. He is hiding the truth in his robes.

"Tell me!"

For just a split second, I would have thought time is frozen and the man-imp has become a statue, except for the waning flicker of clarity in the unnaturally large irises of his eyes. His posture is that of a fencer right before a match, awaiting an honorable foe's honest bow. I'll give him something, but there will be no honor in it.

One foot in front of the other. If I were a car, the 'check engine' light would be flashing like crazy. Only a few steps separates me from the man in the cloak and I skim over the distance in no time at all. If my keyblade is my heart, I suppose that puts a whole new meaning to the idiom 'wear one's heart on one's sleeve'. Mine is in my hand again, aching for answers, questions, plain statements, dare I say blood. One, two, three, four, five, jump, bring the keyblade above my head and then down in a swift diagonal sweep aimed at the crook of his monstrous neck. My senses are clouded. All I can see are brown curls and at the back of my mind, a crimson cloak of a friend I never had. "Tell me!"

I don't want to kill him. I want - need - his surrender.

If I thought my action was reckless and fast, the speed of the man-imp's retaliation must be unfathomable. The keyblade hits an invisible wall, an invisible, see-through titanium wall, behind which a luciferian smile cowers as I'm blasted off in mid-air. The head of this force sends me flying. My eyes widen and in the second or two that I have, one thought races through my mind; where did this power come from? I have no time to guess. The outburst slams my back into the wall, kicking the air out of my lungs. My fingers loosen around the keyblade and we fall to the ground in unison. Only the sound we make is different; metal rings against floor, sending an orchestra of a thousand chiming bells into my head, tumbling hard against my skull. The sound that rips out of my throat is a silent, noiseless scream drowned out by my own silence. I slid down to all fours, grasping at my neck as I try to catch my breath. My efforts get but little recognition and what air gets through to my lungs feels like scorching lava. My muscles weaken from the shortage of oxygen and I tremble, only just realizing I've bitten off way more than I can chew. And the anger that fueled me? Gone in an instant, replaced by the pure instinct to breathe, to survive.

"You would be wise not to bite the hand that feeds you, dearie."

I'd search my brain for a snappy retort, but the struggle not to faint is keeping me immobilized. He uses the extra time, grateful for my silence, to circle me slowly. The view from down here is not all too pleasant for my battered pride and I blow out what little air I have in me through my nostrils at how high a horse this guy's sitting on. He stops by the key and bends over to pick it up; however, as he starts to examine its curves in sheer curiosity, the keyblade disappears, unwilling to be held by a hand other than mine. I sneer.

"I can tell you some things; fulfill your wishes to an extent, if you will. I possess the capability. The required knowledge is at my disposal. Will I, however? Should I?"

I get why he's an acquaintance and not a friend. A friend wouldn't do this. A friend wouldn't make me do what I'm about to do. Once my lungs have settled on a labored but fairly consistent oxygen intake, I swallow the remnants of my self-worth and bite my lip. "Please."

The sounds that comes out of is throat is somewhere between a baby's laugh and a group of rats nibbling on a prisoner's toe in a cellar. Knowing very well there's a shit-eating grin on his face, I refuse to look up, and instead sit on my heels.

"Much better! Let us start from the beginning, then. My name is Rumpelstiltskin," he beams with an exaggerated curtsy. "I cannot tell you what you ran away from, but I can tell you what you were fighting. All in all, Miss Swan, your goals haven't changed. Although you might not realize it, your heart," the pause clearly indicates just which heart he's pertaining to, "requires you to fight for the same cause you always have."

"And what cause is that?"

"Think, dear. I realize your experiences in Castle Oblivion haven't been very... uplifting so far. Why is that? What is it in the worlds you have visited that stands in the way of your happiness?"

A sense of belonging, I think. Everywhere I go, it's missing. I have a feeling that's not what the man-imp is talking about, though. There was the forest. Abandonment. Red's cloak is still lying on the floor. Death.

I sigh. "I don't know. Things just... go wrong."

Rumpelstiltskin clicks his tongue in disapproval. "And I assume they all go wrong by themselves, just like that."

Of course not. Grace ran away because she wanted to look for her father when Sebastian and Jane started talking about this Queen they have. As for Red, she died because the Queen's hunting party went after her... oh.

Oh.

Come to think of it, the only thing those two worlds had in common was the Queen. But that makes no sense. Whatever happened with Grace's father - was it really her fault? And the wolf hunt - she was going to protect the villagers. They didn't know the wolf was one of them. They didn't know Red. Then again, they do call her the Evil Queen... I suppose that kind of reputation can't be earned overnight. Is she my enemy? Or worse, is she the one who did this to me?

"The Queen is behind what happened, but indirectly," I mumble under my breath. Then something else catches my attention. There is another thing the worlds had in common. "There was the keyblade. The key that dragged me away before I could act," I say without trying to conceal the scorn in my voice.

He shakes his head. I must not be a very good pupil. "The keyblade - the heart - knows when a battle is lost. It's the head that refuses to accept the inevitable. You had your chance to save your friends, Emma, and you blew it. That's why the keyblade got you there in the first place, and that's why it brought you back here when you failed. The fact that you haven't noticed this furthermore increases the futility of the situation you've gotten yourself into; you're fighting with your own heart and you don't even realize it. How sad."

That is, essentially, the moment that I break. It's pretty self-evident that I am not one to easily put my trust into something; but in this moment, the man-imp's sadness is genuine. The sparkle in his eyes has faded the moment his last words were uttered. This is what he thinks; that it is sad, so achingly sad that all this time, instead of surrendering to it, being in symbiosis, I have been waging war with the most natural part of me. Why, in the first place, back on the islands - I didn't even want it. Misunderstanding one's heart is a common occurrence, but how could I outright reject it like that, with no shame or remorse coming back to haunt me?

My back cringes into the shape of a crescent moon. Like the moon, I, too, would love to retreat into shadow. Except I can't. Unexpected tears bubble up in my eyes; a symbol of my heart's disappointment with my misdeeds. Here I am, alone in a subway, wandering aimlessly along rusty tracks, and the only light in the distance might as well be the lights of a train. There's nowhere to run when you're buried six feet under ground. The only way left to go is forward, but I wonder; if I were on open ground in a garden of cherry blossoms, would I keep going still?

"So my mission is to kill the Evil Queen, is that what you're saying? That is insane. I've never even seen her. I don't have proof she really is this terrible tyrant a few people seem convinced she is."

"She is responsible for your friend's death," Rumpelstiltskin remarks gently, in case I haven't yet let the fact sink in. Clever of him, too.

"I know, but... She didn't know, did she?" I ask rhetorically, the implications of said query clear. "I can't go around killing royalty. I can't go around killing."

"Now you understand why it's pointless for me to tell you any more. The only way for you to believe a memory is real is by experiencing it." He pauses while I get back on my feet, making no effort to help me up - but to be fair, it's not like I can blame him. Then he reaches for my pocket and I take a cautious step back to prevent him from doing whatever it is that he's about to do. Unfazed, he merely gives me a courteous nod and draws a spiral in the air with his finger. And then there it is, in his hand; a card with an apple red as blood drawn on it in sickly true colors. I could swear I've seen it before, but when I check the batch in my pocket, it isn't there. "Here. This is where you'll find what you seek." He pauses. "Just one little tweak before you go…"

There appears to be no end to this hall as far as the eye can see. Long tables woven with gilded wood, chandeliers, candles – all the yellows burn bright in my vision so much that I can almost smell the vanity of it. Just like last time, it is almost impossible to discern one from another in the sea of heads and waving hands, but that is where the similarity ends. Goblets spilling over with rich wine clatter against glass and gregarious laughter. There are no children, no weapons, and most certainly no commoners. It feels like I'm just an ant in a colony of ruler-straight backs and chins held up higher than the tip of the Eiffel tower. I imagine I must fit in about as much as a needle in a haystack, but Rumpelstiltskin did make the mission easier on me, I notice as a cloth on the back of my hand catches my attention. My eyes narrow; it's my sleeve. It goes from my shoulder all the way down to my hand, where it shrinks into a mossy velvet isosceles triangle, wrapping up my middle finger in an angle formed by a golden ring around it. Oh god, tell me he did not put me in a dress. Startled, I look down to examine the rest of my attire, but fortunately for me, I see he did not dare as to pull my too far out of my element. It's just a shirt with a belt across my stomach – real crocodile skin, how posh – and ordinary leather pants. There's also something gently tugging my shoulders backwards and I realize Red's hood has now become a more permanent ally. Good. I was going to put it on anyway.

Still, the longer I listen to these people discuss in great detail the last official tournament and the delicate way Sir Whatshisname stuck a lance in that other guy's ribcage, the more I miss my jacket. Funny how a person can feel the loneliest when surrounded by the most people. The velvet itches my skin as I walk through row after row of delicious chicken with leaves of salad and tomatoes on the side and… boiled shrimps swimming in pineapple sauce and… is that a whole pig? It hits me that I haven't eaten in, well, a while. How time flows, I'm not sure, but what I am sure about is that it can't hurt to get a taste of all these meals that are dreadfully inappropriate for me to eat. Who knows how soon I'll get close to food again? No one is paying any attention to me now, so I say it can't be too suspicious of me to quench my hunger.

Except I have no idea how to do this. I reach over someone's head to grab a chicken wing, but my hand stills in mid-air when I realize I would be the barbarian of the house. Everybody else has no less than five knives of all shapes and sizes at their disposals, a tea spoon and a coffee spoon and a regular spoon and probably some other spoons too, and the mere idea of me eating (or breathing) the way nature intended for me to is apparently out of the question. Grumbling under my breath, I reach for a cornstick, hoping they don't have a special direction in which to eat the seeds off too. God dammit, so close.

"Did you hear? The queen wants to enter an alliance with King George and his allies in the west. They say his forces could finally help us subdue the ogres."

"Indeed, so I've heard. Though I'd prefer it if they found more adjacent partners. Ogres haven't been seen in the west for how many years now? Plus, allegedly, King George's kingdom is struggling with a bit of a scaly problem, if you catch my drift."

"Oh, shush, you!"

"I only wish to bring to attention the fact that he has zero experience in the matter."

"Mm-hmm, yes indeed."

Right, the queen. Ollie, Ollie, oxen free, where in this mess might I find thee… And what shall I do once I do? For whatever I do will be hard to undo. Ugh, this place is making me crazy. I spy a glass door at the end of the hall, presumably leading outside. Since there seems to be no royalty – a lot of whining aristocrats, sure, but not royalty – in my immediate presence, I decide getting some fresh air might as well be a good idea. I can get some time to think, about this place, about Rumpel, why he sent me here, where Sora is…

Outside I am greeted by a clear night sky shining down on a yard of but one tree in the center. Curiously enough, even though it appears to be too cold for summer, the apples possess a purplish tint in the moonlight, and I let out an 'oh' because the card makes much more sense now. I stroll over to it, admiring the sheer volume of it. Fascinating, how something so solid and – pardon the pun – deep-rooted can exist so effortlessly on such shaky ground. I touch the bark.

_What the hell are you doing?_

_Picking apples._

Somehow I expect everything to change, to fall apart, dissolve into a pool of shards of shattered stained glass under my touch. My fingers sit still on the wood, imagining a single stroke would tear the page, letting the paper slide down the stairway to hell. I imagine that if my nail cut the bark, a brook of resin would find its way down, stealing the tree's life with it. The tree would burn and disintegrate, along with the little fence and the columns and the stars and the stone, into a murder of motley crows. And the crows would croak and scream, desperate for freedom.

But nothing happens.

"Excuse me, do I know you?"

I jump and shrink away from the tree like I've just committed a sacrilege. There's a woman standing there behind me, bristling with curiosity and sudden delight I see no explanation for. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know there was someone else out here," I mumble. "I wouldn't want to disturb you."

I'm already storming past when her voice stops me, not a crow's wingspan away from her. "Please, stay. I am quite thankful for the company."

I sigh noiselessly, shaking my head so that she doesn't see. I'm not out here to talk. Still, like everything else these days, it doesn't seem like I have much of a choice. It's not like there's another place nearby when I can sit and ponder the nature of the universe.

When I've assured her I aim to comply, she takes a polite introductory bow. "Regina."

_You have no idea what I'm capable of._

"Emma," I reply, mentally kicking myself milliseconds after when I catch myself offering her a hand instead. When I retract, she's already noticed. So much for fitting in. "Uh, my apologies. I seem to have misplaced my manners." Wow, that sounded about as natural as a bat singing Ode to Joy. A+ job, Emma. Four for you, Emma.

"Don't be silly. I'd love a break from these excessive formalities," she chuckles. Immediately, however, she stiffens from head to toe as if she'd just denied something unforgivable. Her eyes plead me not to dwell on it, but then again, I'm only too happy to oblige.

I clear my throat. "So, why aren't you enjoying the banquet?"

Her shoulders sag. "No one seems to notice my absence."

"Well, out here, I'm telling you, you're pretty damn noticeable," I shrug.

I didn't mean it as a joke, but her laughter echoes in my ears like a welcoming bell above a pawnshop's door upon entry, and for a moment I contemplate the possibility that the girl is drunk.

"You're new in these parts, aren't you?"

"No, no, I've just… been gone for a long time."

And who knows, maybe I'm not lying after all. Truth be told, though, there is no way I can picture myself taking any pleasure in a blatantly zoological expression of vanity such as the one happening on the other side of the wall. Regina can't either. She's not buying any of it. It comes out as a kind of favor – her repaying me brushing off her formalities remark – when she plays into my cards.

"You've visited strange lands?" She asks hopefully, giving me a barely noticeable nod as she throws me a metaphorical life preserver.

"Actually, yeah. Before coming here, I'd been to all sorts of places."

Tiny wrinkles of a smile appear on her face. She looks at me like a child who's been abandoned at a playground and doesn't even realize it thanks to there being so many forgotten castles and so many cobweb-paved hallways to explore. Still, it isn't until I walk over to a wall topped with a fence, which I now see is the only thing keeping us away from a rather unwelcoming-looking ride down a cliff, that I grasp the full extent of her interest. Creasing her dress, she tiptoes behind me like an obedient puppy, and soon follows my example when I set my elbows on the guarding stone, looking up at the dotted horizon.

"What kinds of places?"

"None that suit your ladyship, I'm sure. And none that were all that interesting."

"No, tell me, I want to know!"

I look down on the hand on my arm. She's managed to trap a bit of Red's hood underneath.

I should be searching for the queen, not telling stories. But… sigh. "I'm not a good storyteller… or a good talker. But…"

"But?"

If I'm going to do this, I should at least make it remotely interesting. "For example, there was this spooky corner of the world where everything was black. Everything. The sun, the sky, the ground, everything was black. Because of that, you couldn't see anything at all. You couldn't be sure the sun, the sky, or the ground were even there to begin with."

"Sounds like a lonely place," she guesses.

"You know what? Not really. I liked it there, to be honest. Once you get used to not sensing anything, you just kind of… drift. For a long, long time. I caught up with my sleeping schedule real quick in there."

"How did you escape if there was no way for you to know which way to go?"

"Let's just say sometimes a little nudge in the right direction is all one needs."

Regina keeps asking. The topic of the black void is quickly depleted and I'm left with no other option but to include her in on my other stories. And she asks and she asks for what seems like hours; 'What kinds of trees were there?' 'Did you see any shellfish in the water?' 'What did the door look like?' 'How were they dressed?' 'What were they talking about?' 'What happened to Mr. Rabbit?' 'Were you scared?' 'Wasn't it uncomfortable when you slept on the ground like that?' 'What's it like to have snow melt in your hands?' Eventually, I find myself automatically thinking of more eloquent ways to describe my story. She guides me every step of the way, and although it's not much, I do my best to give her a sharp image of the lands, or rooms, I've visited. Sometimes I don't even remember the specific detail she demands to know myself and have to make something up. It doesn't matter; truthful recollection of my memories is not what Regina is after, and it's not what I aim to give her, either. I skip or alter many critical points, such as the whole affair with me being able to conjure a giant weaponized key, or Sora. I make it beautiful for her and for her dream of freedom.

She likes Red's story the best. It feels so foreign and flattering, having someone who's interested in what I have to say, that I don't even mind introducing my talk with Red this evening. 'There's only so much forgiveness that has to be earned. The rest is automatic.' I see I've captivated Regina with this concept. Maybe that's why, as the night meets its end in my head, I make my old new friend part ways with me, having deposited the poor wounded girl safely at the village. I need more people like Regina in my life. Maybe that way I would believe the stories I tell.

Adjusting my elbow on the rock – it's bruised from some fight or another – I examine the celestial arch above. Amusingly enough, in all these rooms, the sky is the same. "See that constellation over there that looks like an hourglass? That's Orion. And the big star to the northwest of that is Aldebaran."

"You like stars?" Regina asks, frowning in the direction I'm pointing.

Right. I shouldn't have brought that up. "Yeah. Sorry, that was stupid. I point out random stuff when I've run out of things to say."

"No, it's okay, I like them too," she says in a haste, afraid to have offended me. I turn to face her and see Orion's reflection in her eyes. She takes a breath to support the words she's about to utter, but then nothing comes out. I see her chest heave and her shoulders rise. "I believe we call it The Butterfly," she speaks at last. My brows knit together, but luckily she continues before I have a chance to make a fool of myself. "It looks like a butterfly from above, spreading its wings. Each half forms one wing."

"Oh, I see it now," I exclaim. "That makes much more sense than a guy clubbing a lion to death."

It dawns on me that I remember. I remember Orion. I remember why I pointed it out! Holding onto that tiny glimpse of the past in my mind, I browse the folders for something else to show me the right way. It feels like when you wake up from a dream one morning, but you can't for the life of you remember its contents, only that it made you feel a certain something. You go on about your day. It's the only thing you can do. But then, at some point, you see a curve in the road or a specific alignment of pencils and mugs on your desk, or when a fly lands on the edge of your book, or some other completely clueless random happenstance of unpredictable consequences occurs and you _remember_, but it's just a flash, just a nanosecond during which your memory granted you access to every single moment you've dreamed. And then it's gone, just like that, along with that spontaneous realization. Trying to find it again is even harder than before.

"I used to think that Orion was trying to catch Aldebaran," I say, squinting. "I thought it was a boy who'd accidentally let it go and I kept cheering for him to catch it. Every opportunity I'd get I'd check if any progress was made. Eventually I started pleading for Aldebaran to come back.

In the end, I realized they were just stars in the distance with their own names, unmoving. No more, no less."

I am silly. Shaking my head in disbelief at my own actions, I chuckle. It's like I'm Orion all over again. "I should go, and so should you. People must be waiting for you."

"They're not."

It strikes me as baffling when I stare at this figure in the moonlight. She's telling the truth. No one is waiting for a statue of porcelain perfection. We, the two of us, might have more in common than first crossed my mind. She stands before me, as bare as a dove in the clutches of a lake of unfulfilled dreams of greatness, liberty and starry constellations. She begs me not to go in a positively regal fashion that leaves me the one begging; wordlessly, her hands joined at her waist in prayer.

I don't know what to say. The chatter behind the walls continues, losing importance in favor of our intimate little session by the second. All pride must have left me. The only thing that's still there is something I can't identify. It's bubbling under the surface and around the dove, more so when she takes a step forward.

"Do you still believe stars can't move?"

It would be so easy to hold the dove underwater and let the whirlpool crush her bones. I'm one small breath away from doing exactly that, but… I can't. I can't do it. I've never seen a dove before, yet the thought of running a knife through this one makes the cloak too heavy on my shoulders to bear.

And maybe, just maybe, she has a point. "Maybe they're just," I offer, following her example and setting one foot in front of the other, "really," rinse and repeat, "really," tread lightly, Swan, "really," because that line is so last century, "really slow about it."

Thinking is overrated.

I'm not entirely sure who makes the first move. If she didn't do it, I would outrun her and vice versa. After all, there's no one waiting for us.

One way or the other, we kiss. Seeing as I've never kissed anyone before – not that I can remember – I don't know what a person is supposed to feel during these things and neither do I have time to ponder it. I just press my lips to hers, rest my calloused hands on her pristine cheeks, and pull her closer. It's a rush of electric poison that shoots thunderbolts through my body, freezing my feet on the spot like the apple tree whose roots I so admired hours ago. The fact that I'm growing my own should frighten me, but when she does the same to me and closes what little distance remains between us, I couldn't care less. I couldn't let go even if I wanted to. I dare her to let me in and she gladly allows it, letting my tongue explore. She tastes so oddly familiar it's driving me insane. Suddenly I'm back in the 'spooky corner of the world', unable to see, unable to hear, except there's no darkness, only Regina, and the warm tingle she leaves on my lips, the fireworks in the pit of my stomach, and the soothing melody at the back of my mind.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

It's too late for me now. I've been poisoned. Because there's no one waiting for us.

So instead of drowning the dove, I lifted her out of the water. What does that make me?

Our noses bump and I can't suppress a laugh. She laughs too. We must look like two giddy preschoolers who just learned how to draw a pony with a cowboy hat. Somehow she ends up leading me by the hand to her chambers. Regina knows every nook and every secret corridor of this – I note – castle – Castle within a castle? We don't go back through the glass door to face the chatter. Instead she takes me down a spiraling path from our spot. I allow myself to be led on her leash, overwhelmed by the sheer magnificence of it all. This is what a little girl wishes for her life to be at night with a flashlight underneath the sheets; towers that hold the sky, balconies to greet it in the morning, lanceted windows, and the rustle of a riverbend in the background. I'm so focused on looking up I almost trip over a misplaced cobblestone. Moments later I witness a panicked squirrel fleeing in horror. Apparently this comes off as hilarious, because Regina giggles uncontrollably as she waits for me to catch up. She points to an enclave hidden behind a wall of ivy, where we find our entrance.

Wait a minute… chambers?

"You live here?" I stagger as we run up the fifth or sixth flight of stairs, quickly running out of breath.

"You didn't think the king keeps me in a kennel, did you?" she smirks – though the bitter undertone to her voice implants a clear visualization in my mind composed mainly of Regina, collars, and angry shepherd dogs – pulling untrained old me up the last step. Two guards at the top of the stairs bow their head respectfully and step out of the way, tapping the dull end of their spears on the floor.

Oh no.

Oh god no.

It takes her no more than five seconds to realize she's left me behind. I stare at her, wide-eyed and petrified. This isn't happening, is it? It can't be. Regina can't be the one. This beautiful girl with dreams in her eyes, chains on her pinions, sparks in her touch, and a crescent moon in her wake cannot be the one. "Your majesty—"

"Regina," she stiffens. "Use my name if you're going to address me."

Oh fuck.

"What is it?" she demands softly, having made her way back to shun any trace of hesitation that might be racing through my bones. It takes a great deal of resolve not to growl as her hands settle on my arms, thumbs tracing little circles here and there.

The image of what I'm supposed to see haunts my mind. I'm supposed to see a villain. I'm supposed to see a homewrecker, a tyrant, a witch. I'm supposed to see the murderer of one of my only two friends. But when I look at her, what I see doesn't even come close to any of those. What I do see is the woman who's heard my stories. What I see is the woman I've kissed.

I shake my head and resume my pace. "Nothing. I'm just a little… It's beautiful in here, and yet you seem unhappy."

She smiles to herself for reasons I don't understand and takes my hand.

There are no guards at her door, thank god. She leads me inside, shutting it behind us, and the corners of her mouth curl upwards as she watches my reaction to this new environment.

"Woah," I gape, stumbling about across an oriental carpet. I could swear the ceiling in this room is higher than the sky. Based on what I see when I look out the windows, it might as well be so; I can't be sure whether the night is that pure or whether the clouds have all fallen below eye level. She's got candles in here; one on each nightstand, one on the table with a mirror, a candelabrum next to the chess set – I never learned the rules – and there may be more, but it's still dark, because none of them is lit. While I'm trying to decipher the swirly contours of the furniture, she procures an oil lamp, lighting up this new world one corner at a time. I observe her actions via the mirror and catch a sentiment being born in my mind that I should tell her not to burn herself. It doesn't get any farther than that. She must have done such a simple task a thousand and one times before me.

As soon as the lamp meets the nearest flat surface, I assault her lips and lock my arms around her waist, eager to relive the search from before. She yelps in surprise, and I'm just about one swipe of tongue away from pushing her onto the sheets when she sucks in my lower lip and nibbles on it, at which I raise an eyebrow at her. Well, well, well, she's certainly grown much bolder somewhere during those six flights of stairs. "Looks like we have a conflict of interests going on here."

"Where I come from, you had to take what you wanted."

"Is that a challenge?"

Finally achieving my goal, I push her back first onto the bed, grinning when she bounces off of it a little. I climb on top of her, straddling her hips. There's a sense of empowerment that comes along with this, the way the brisk glint in her eyes anticipates my every move before I make the previous, and I can't help the smirk plastered on my face. She props herself up on her elbows and hooks her left arm around my neck so we can continue from where we left off. I use the opportunity to remove the brooch from her hair and place it on the nightstand. Then my hand slithers down her neck and to her collarbone, fingers barely holding onto her shoulder, because I'm not quite sure whether I want to pull her up or have her lie down.

Actually, I'm not very confident about anything. This – what we're doing – it feels natural, definitely, but there's no handbook I know of to tell me what to do next. I pull away much to Regina's disappointment, searching my mind for a deduction of what exactly is wrong about this. Unconscious of the frown I'm wearing, I keep staring blankly at the frills of her dress until I start to feel my cheeks getting flushed with warmth. "You might have to give me pointers. I've never done this before," I mutter, eluding her gaze.

"Neither have I," she smiles sheepishly. Dark brunette tresses cascade down her chest and I take a moment to marvel at how flawlessly the strands blend together, molding a contrasting frame for her visage and the veneer the wears, one I can see underneath. I tread my thumb through a stray lock. Before when it was tied in a bun, I failed to notice how long her hair actually is, perhaps even longer than mine. It occurs to me that this state of things is appropriate, too, because she is the one with the most power. She should be the one with the longest hair and the most white roses woven into her dresses.

Formally, anyway.

I reach behind her to unlace her dress, which fortunately doesn't turn out to be too perilous a quest. A tug here, a hook there, and soon she's shimmying out of it like a cat through bars. I would be presumptuous to claim it's all my doing, though. She takes over and soon lies before me naked, this time in a literal sense. I can tell from the way she's holding her arms over her chest that she's shy about it – let's face it, we both are a little – so I turn my back to her and start taking off my own clothes. The blood of Red's cloak stings in both my hand and conscience when I grasp it. But she's not the same. I throw it away.

I can feel her gaze digging into my bare back. I look over my shoulder to see her staring at me, her eyes glazed with barely unshed tears that don't let their presence be known in any other manner and her fingers inching towards me. "What?" I ask. Then I feel her caress on my shoulder blade. Confused, I spot our reflection at an angle in the mirror and witness the cause of the shift in her mood.

Scars.

Uncountable scars.

So this is what my memory is hiding then.

"I'm sorry," Regina whispers, placing a tender kiss on my spine, where another scar happens to reside. For what, I don't know.

I flip her onto her back sans preamble and latch onto her neck, palming her breast. I sincerely hope there are pullovers somewhere in the depths of her royal closet. She groans when my nail scrawls over her nipple, which in turn hardens almost immediately as if on order. I sneer into her neck as she squeaks when I twist it. "Like this?" I breathe into her ear before lapping at the shell of it. There's no doubt that if I dared stop my ministrations and look, I could see the goosebumps rise on her skin.

"Unhh-huh," she moans, not so subtly trying to drag me downwards by the hair. I take the hint, teasing the other nipple by just hovering over the areola, coating it in my breath. Seeing her squirm is a delight I didn't know I wanted, and now I can't say I'm willing to let it go that easily. "That is not fair," she grumbles petulantly when her attempts to get me where she wants me result in me pinning her down.

"Nuh-uh. You see, where I come from, you had to beg for what you wanted."

I have to mentally kick myself for talking this way to a queen – even in bed – but this game is just too much fun for me to end it. Regina narrows her eyes at me, a foreshadowing twinkle in her irises. It puzzles me until I feel her knuckles pressing into my clit. "Oh," I gasp. "That works too."

I find it much harder to concentrate with rogue hands in such precarious places, but I do get the goal done, taking the taut bud in my mouth while she substitutes her knuckles for her knee. I bite down lightly when it feels like she's losing focus herself, and that quickly sets her back on track. Her fingers comb through my hair in sync, and if I weren't so aroused, I'd probably appreciate the nurturing nature of it. Right now, though, I bite my cheek because I can feel myself drip thanks to just that bit of pressure. Still circling her nipples with my tongue, I run my hand down her ribs like a cougar, relishing in making the girl writhe at the pale red marks on her skin. Then I part her folds just to check to see if I'm having the desired effect on her.

Heheh, success. Guilty as charged. I stop mid-lick, much to her dismay, and slide up her body, smirking. I let her watch me, never breaking eye contact, as I suck the sticky substance off my finger. Regina puffs out air through her nostrils, her lips parted, her eyes vivid and daring.

For us, for tonight, sex is an inversed game. A game we both want the other to win. Maybe it is supposed to be like that. Maybe we're doing something wrong. Hell if I know. A few times she stops me, saying "Not like this" and adjusting my position, or hers, or both, to suit her better. Once the dice point to me too. At first I bite my lip at how awkward it is, but I get it through my thick skull (and across an ocean of ego) that though we might be pretending the opposite, we don't truly know what we're doing. We're playing a game we haven't read the rules to, using the method of trial and error as our only source of knowledge. And that's okay. It's good, really. Because no matter how I look at it, in the end I still have her trapped underneath my body, beads of sweat mingling together as my name, the only way she knows it, falls from her lips over and over like a prayer unfulfilled.

"Emma, Emma, oh god, Emma…"

In the end it's not her nimble digits moving inside me or her hips grinding into mine that send me over the edge. It's the mantra she's moaning and knowing that ultimately, I am her world at this moment. It's the fact that she's lost in me, clawing at my back, oblivious to reality if it caught fire around us, bringing me to heights I never knew existed. It's when her back arches and her muscles tighten around and inside me, and she looks me in the eye with unforeseen bliss and limitless gratitude, that I close my eyes and whimper the syllables in Regina's name.

She lets me ride it out a little longer than herself, then brings me back to earth with a simple kiss. It serves its purpose. She drapes the covers over the two of us. I am thankful for it, too, because it is only now that, free of the bonds of passion, I realize how cold it is in her chambers. Still it startles me when she wraps an arm around me and nuzzles my neck, whispering "good night" against the crook of it. She drifts off to peaceful slumber, humming softly in my embrace, leaving me to face a sleepless night.

What have I done?

Particles of dust glide through a ray of mild light, suggesting the rise of dawn. I wish I got the opportunity to inspect her face as she sleeps, but as fate would have it, that's not a luxury I can afford. I wake up to havoc. I jerk up and Regina immediately throws the blanket over me. She's screaming at them to get out; them, I notice, being four guards in the same feathery attire I've seen once before. I manage to register the candelabrum lying dead at the foot of the bed, one of its candles split in half and useless amongst seeds of creamy wax, before I'm forcefully pulled to my feet and dragged towards the door. She reaches out for me but the guards step between us. She cries. "Emma" and "no" mostly. She tries to start an argument, but they ignore her, dragging me naked through the door, one at each arm and the rest as a royal escort, I suppose. At least I get the pleasure of knowing a third one has to punch me in the stomach when I struggle too much for their liking.

I thrash and lash about like a disgraced animal in a cage, partially because being exposed like this makes me even more aggressive than I would be under different circumstances. I look over my shoulder to see if Regina's come out to help me, but she's not there. A guard slaps me across the cheek, snarling at me to pay attention where I'm going or I just might lose a foot.

They throw me in the dungeon. A dungeon swarming with pirates and lowlifes of all sorts, most of which presumably haven't seen a woman in a long time, judging by the way they whistle and holler when the soldiers kick me so I fall to my knees and lock the cell door behind me. Their footsteps clank against the wet walls as I sit in the middle of hay, dirt, and rats. It stinks like raw sewage in here and let me tell you, that's quite a culture shock from last night. If I said I felt shy in front of Regina, claiming I'm like a fish on dry land here is a terrible understatement. Their stares burrow into my skin and make pretty little nests under that first visible layer, refusing to ever leave. If they think I belong in here of all places, I must have fucked up big time along the way.

"Oy, I'd lick those scars of yours, pretty lady."

My fists almost clench, but I stop myself in time. I rise and calm down my breathing before I turn to him. I think of an ocean. A vast, unexplored sea combating the northern winds. The fire erupting in my gut subsides just enough to portray itself as a harmless little flame in a gilded case. "Is that so? Come here, then," I say, making my way towards the bars, a smile made of honey and clovers on the doll's face.

It's pathetic to the point of nearly evoking a speck of pity in me, the way he hops over my way faster than a hungry pup would run to its master. Nearly. The hunched figure looks perhaps twenty years older than he really is and reeks of booze despite not having even smelled any for ages. He has a limp, too, and a bunch of rags stacked neatly in the corner of his cell like they're his most prized possessions. I motion for him to come hither until there's about ten inches of filth and make-believe between us. Then I make a point of drilling my fist directly in his crotch on the other side of the bars. Ew. I'd better get a chance to wash my hands soon. "Next time I cut it off," I hiss.

There's a loud 'boo' from the others as this one collapses to the floor. I've reduced him to tears. If that's not a sad sight to behold, I don't know what is.

At least they have the decency to bring me my clothes. That can help me salvage what's left of my dignity. When I try to ask on what grounds they're holding me in here and what they're going to do to me, all I get is a disgusted grimace. No one makes a sound as I put my pants and shirt back on, sliding my middle finger through the symbolic ring at the end of my sleeve. Maybe I should put it on my ring finger instead. That way I can pretend I've found some closure. Maybe Regina put it on me that way. Guh. I knew the girl was trouble the second I laid eyes on her.

It's not long until they've come back for me. There will be a trial, they say. I'll get my punishment, they say. Punishment for what? The king obviously can't do his job properly if he didn't notice his wife was missing until the morning. They lead me into a courtyard with possibly hundreds of people watching on the platforms. It certainly didn't take them very long to gather all the sheep, I muse. My hands are tied in rope behind my back as I stand before the jury and the executioner. They're perched up on their thrones high above, merely observing, vultures waiting for their dinner to die. The sight of the scaffold and the gallows sends an icy stalactite through my ribs, sucking the air out of my lungs. For the first time, I can feel my chin tremble. These people aren't kidding. Something tells me their idea of punishment doesn't equal a healthy fine.

My heart skips a beat when I see her on the jury alongside her king and his counselors. She's safe and has a say in this; that means she won't let them hurt me. My lungs inflate to a portion of their normal size again.

"Do you deny tainting the king's wife?" the man asks, having recited a long and most tedious chronicle of the history of trials, the accused's (lack of) rights, and a poignant soliloquy describing the heinousness of my deeds there's no point in even mentioning, because most of his words go right over my head without stopping. He's circling me with an irritating smug grin glued to his squared face. I'd bite his ear off if it weren't for the two other guys standing guard at my side. The cowardly king can't even handle one tied up woman by himself? So be it.

"With all due respect, I didn't _taint_ anything, sir."

My reaction obviously catches him by surprise, and I can't say I'm sorry. I have nothing to be sorry for. "Well then, perhaps you might be more willing to confess you've committed adultery with the queen instead. Is that true?"

I hang my head in shame and let out a sigh. I was so mesmerized by her I didn't even think about… I didn't think. I'm an idiot. I got stuck in a medieval cage with thousands of traps for me to fall victim to, and I break before the most obvious lie, telling me that security comes for free? It's just now that the volume of what we've – what I've – done spreads before me like a rug of burning cinders.

Still, I can't help but remember her scent, the moon in her eyes, and both of our stars in heaven.

"Yes."

"Do you admit you've encroached upon the king's belongings?"

My head snaps up and I pierce Leopold's (because he doesn't even deserve a title) skull with a glare. He's watching the trial like it's none of his business. He might as well be bored. Probably can't wait to get this over with and return to his royal activities, such as overeating and discussing the unpleasant weather. "She's not your property, you son of a bitch!"

The crowd gasps in unison. "Burn the witch!" "Off with her head!" "Such insolence!" they cry, deceived by their blind pursuit of justice.

"I think we've heard enough. The verdict is yours to pick, your highness."

My nostrils flare as I stare the old man down. I've elicited no reaction from him whatsoever. He sits there, golden crown firmly planted on his balding head, chin held up high while I have to struggle to not be faced with the ground, like he's not interested in our puny affairs at all. Like he doesn't have a reason to care. Like he knows exactly what's going to happen. And he does, of course he does, and by now my mouth goes dry because I realize that no matter what Regina says, no matter whose side she takes in the end, it won't matter. She never mattered – not to Leopold. It won't matter that I made her happy for a while. It won't matter that I was there and not him. It won't matter that when he was, in fact, there, he plucked her wings and stomped on her heart. It won't matter that I mended the holes with my stories. It won't matter that even though I've never spoken to him directly, I despise him. I loathe him, his laws, his land, and his graying beard.

During those few seconds of silence, I keep asking myself whether I'm really the villain. How can a simple act that brought so much happiness to us – while it lasted – be so unforgivable? Where is my forgiveness? What do I have to do to earn it? Yes, we were together, but we were happy. For the first longer period of time since my awakening, I was happy. Am I wrong in thinking I deserve it? Probably. I was certainly wrong in pursuing it. There's no way I can rationalize anymore.

"I sentence you to death."

The steel of Regina's voice cuts me in half. My jaw drops as my eyes dart from the king – who appears to be smiling at last – to her, with her head tied in a bun like it was when we met. It's the first time she's met my gaze, but all I see is smoke and the night. She's a statue of porcelain, dull, still, emotionless. The cheering becomes a muffled mess of whales crying underwater in my ears. My heart pounds relentlessly against my ribs. I keep looking at her wide-eyed all the while they're dragging me up the three wooden steps to the gallows, hoping for a glimpse of hope, anything to let me know it wasn't all just a ploy.

In this choreographed opera of insanity, I miss the quivering of her lip.

The necklace of rope slithers around my neck, gnawing at it before the main course. I can feel it tighten under my jaw. The knot in my hair squeezes tears out of me. The crowd cheers. A boy cries for his mom, the shrill sound lost in a cloud of victorious chanting. The last thing I see is her standing up – probably to give the final word – and then I close my eyes, running back to the corner of the world where everything a pitch black void. Warmth trickles down my cheeks; maybe I'd hear sharp, ragged breaths if I tried. But I don't. There is no key in the darkness.

I dream of a lone oak tree on a snowy plain. It's sturdy and large, but old and tired. It waits, alone, for them to come, and when they do, it comes off as a relief. They cut it down, but it doesn't fall. Its branches reach up and up it goes, leaving but fallen leaves behind.

And then the tree is no more.

* * *

**A/N:** I'm so sorry this took so long. But in any case, I am nowhere near done with this. Nowhere near, nope.


	7. Intermezzo: Son

**Intermezzo 4 ½ - Son**

Mama, it's me, Henry. You have to wake up! You can't die! Please, wake up! I know you probably don't want to, but... No matter what she says, no matter what she does, mom loves you. Can you hear me? She loves you! Remember that time she let you eat pizza in the living room after you came home late and you were really hungry, but a game you'd been looking forward to was on at the same time? She never would have let you do that if she didn't love you. Even I'm not allowed to do that.

Did you get my messages? I thought my music boxes would help you remember, but it's not working. Pinocchio's helping me build them for you. It's all part of Operation Falcoa. I can almost do it all by myself now. Pinocchio says you would be proud.

Is it because you don't remember the first music box? I gave it to you for your first birthday in the castle. You took it to my room and let it play while you were reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to me. Mom watched us from the doorway. Your back was turned to her, but I knew she didn't want me to say anything, because she'd never heard you read. Then she crawled into bed with us and complained that there wasn't enough Snape development in the chapter. The music box was still playing when I fell asleep somewhere during Madam Hooch's flying lesson. I liked resetting it whenever it stopped, and you blamed me for having the melody stuck in your head for days. But you and mom liked it. I thought it would help. I thought... I thought that would make it okay. But she still-

I miss you. My only other option now is to hope they're not lying and that you can actually hear me. Mom and the others didn't want me to see the book, so they left it too high for me to reach. I thought I'd get Falcoa to fetch it down in his beak, but he's too big and noisy to get inside the castle without everyone noticing. I had to stack some chairs together, but I made it. I didn't read what mom and the others said, though. I was going to, but then I remembered mom really hates it when I eavesdrop on your conversations. She probably just told you a bunch of gross lovey dovey grownup stuff I've heard a hundred times anyway.

Oh, hey, you know who else misses you? Applejack. But don't worry, mom takes care of her. She grooms her and feeds her and lets her run around outside, although Applejack rarely walks more than a few feet at a time. She doesn't want to go anywhere without her rider. Falcoa's always trying to cheer her up, but I think she's scared of how playful he is. Then sometimes mom goes down to the stables and doesn't come out for hours. I wonder what she could be doing in there for so long.

Sometimes I dream of Grace. I always say hi to her at night before I go to sleep. In my dreams, she often tells me that you're going to visit her soon. You're not, are you? Please, mom, don't. You have to wake up. I really don't want you to go where Grace is. I don't want you to go where my little sister is...


	8. Station of Serenity

**A/N:** So sorry this took so long! I kind of hit a writer's block that lasted for months with this, and then I accidentally wrote the next chapter before this one... Don't ask me how. Anyway, I have the next chapter ready as well, but I still have to proofread both of these, so this is just me baiting you into staying with hopefully decent plot development.

**As always, English is not my native language. I'm sorry.**

* * *

**Chapter 5 – Station of Serenity**

_The door is closing behind you._

There's air in my lungs. They swell with it, pushing against my ribs, causing them to spread outward. The movement feels unnatural, as if my diaphragm were unaccustomed to having been put to use. In light of that inexperience, it happens slowly, sluggishly. With caution my body processes the energy necessary for survival, setting my vital signs into motion. At the end of this exhausting process, I am almost too worn out to repeat it. I muster up just enough strength to let out a barely audible, incapacitated sound.

I'm alive.

I'm alive!

In spite of the unfamiliarity, I inhale as much air at once as possible. I could keep it up, I could start coughing. My lungs must not have the capacity to contain the overdose of oxygen, but all the rest of my body screams is 'make up for it, up, up, up.' I'm blinded by a veil of white and then something pulls me up by the collar. I struggle with the unseen force, colorful blotches replacing what I deep down recognize to be the pristine walls of Castle Oblivion as the sharp sting of a handprint on my cheek brings me to my senses.

"Pull yourself together!" exclaims a grimmer of fading hope.

It's her.

I leap several steps back and look up to see the ruler-straight figure of a queen atop an invisible throne. The resemblance is unmistakable. Her unclipped hair, though much shorter now – how long was I unconscious? – falls heavily on her shoulders, framing a face that holds nothing but scorn for me in its expression as if it had any right to. Without a doubt it's her, but still not quite the same. She carries with her an air of borderline egoistic confidence, nothing like the wounded grace of the woman I met just… last night? Or was it in another lifetime entirely?

"You really don't remember me," she announces, not expecting an answer. "I shouldn't be surprised at this point."

"Of course I remember you. It's hardly easy to forget the face of the one who killed me," I hiss as blood starts to boil in my veins.

I can see her jaw clench from here. "You should reconsider your words."

"You _killed_ me! The order came from your lips, not his!"

"You are deluded."

"Why are you here, Regina? To finish the job? Nothing left to do but get your own hands dirty for once? Or did you change your mind? Let me guess, hanging is just too easy, let's torture the girl first, that sounds like fun, am I right?" I snarl with a crooked grin, summoning the keyblade to my side. I've only just regained the ability to process oxygen and I've grown quite fond of it, thank you very much. Regina's mouth falls agape; she's never seen me use it before, if she even knows what it is. Good. Let it be known that I have surprises up my sleeve just as much as she does. Let her see just how much of a traitor the image of me can prove to be. "I thought…"

No, I didn't. I didn't think. I thought nothing at all.

I raise the blade as tears of rage well up in my eyes, ready to brandish and strike her somewhere, anywhere as long as it hurts. Let her be in pain, the same pain I've known dearly from the moment I glimpsed Red's cloak for the last time and willed it to find its way back to me, the same pain that curled around my neck on the gallows, the same excruciating pain that raced through my spine with the four goddamned notes repeating–

She won't move.

Keyblade seconds away from falling down on her hard, Regina doesn't move. She purses her lips and her shoulders tense, but her feet stay planted in place. Perhaps she is the king's wife after all, because she bears the same features, the same pitiful reality on her mind: I won't strike. I could end her where she stands in one swing and erase her and her entire fucked up world from history, but she is convinced I won't do it. Her eyes close and it's as much as of an open-armed welcome as I could ask for.

Fuck this shit, she's right. Muscles coming to a halt, I'm about to bark at her to defend herself when the keyblade shatters into a swarm of a thousand tiny feet and pairs of membraneous wings that drown out her features for a split second that is not even remotely close to being enough to make the vision of her go away. Of course I wouldn't harm a defenseless woman. Of course I wouldn't reject the one I had spent the night with. Of course she would do something like that to grant herself impunity in my eyes. Of course, of course. "You are the most manipulative…" my tongue catches on the word and I gulp it down. "Leave me alone! Get out of my sight!"

She exhales in one heavy breath. There's a brief timelike window during which Regina seems to wane like all that's been supporting her, helping her stay upright to this point is crumbling. I look through that window and think that maybe, just maybe not stabbing her where she stands was the right way to go. Those naïve presumptions are quickly shunned as my back hits the wall without me ever registering the force that sprang from her fingertips and pinned me to it, followed by a set of hungry vines, treacherous as the one who grows them. Her mockery has reached the point where I find my wrists and ankles being tied to stone, yet she creates no bounds for my neck – probably felt like she would be repeating herself.

Fuck. She always has to have one trick more than I do at the ready, doesn't she? Why am I even surprised; they call her the Evil Queen for legitimate reasons. "If you're going to kill me, kill me properly, you incompetent bitch."

Curiously enough, she's tied me up higher than herself so that she now has to tilt her chin up to look me in the eye, a feat I would have expected her to not have the guts to pull off, but she surprises me yet again. "Miss Swan," oh, fabulous, so it's back to this now, "I'm going to say this one time and one time only," how classy of you, "so you'd better mark my every word," but I never told her my last name, did I? "You are being tricked. There are greater powers at work here than you or I for that matter will ever fathom toying with you. None of this is real. Nothing you've faced up to this point has been real. They're all illusions designed to keep you running in circles, to prevent you from going the right way, so for once in your miserable life, listen to me and do what's right for your family, or so help me god, I will–"

"You'll do what?" I laugh spitefully. "What the hell do you know about family?" Her hand curls, grabbing at the pendant of the bracelet that hangs numbly off of its wrist. Nothing would strike you out of the ordinary about this plain silver chain, but if you followed the trail of rings, you'd find a five-pointed golden star the size of a child's palm dragging it down. It looks curious, comical even, around a wrist. Due to its size, this kind of thing would be more appropriate as a necklace or perhaps a different kind of accessory altogether. The witch's fingers clutch it as if hoping for it to give them strength, but the charm remains a motionless witness to what I'm about to say. "What do you know, Regina, my queen? Why should I obey you, of all people? You haven't seen what I've seen. You haven't been where I've been. You'd been hiding in your ivory tower for who knows how long before I came along. You know _nothing_ about this place and even less about me.

That night made me realize something. I stood there on those stones and I looked up at the sky, and when I tried to count the stars, I realized there were many more than I had ever imagined. Thousands and thousands of stars shining away while we bugs go on about our business. And let me tell you, among all those stars, we won't be the ones to last. It may be years, it may be millennia, but eventually the last of us will grow old and perish and this entire land will rot and dissipate. Do you think the tree of life cares? The tree of life doesn't give a flying damn. We, all of us, my story, your story, we're like seeds in an apple, and no more or less important. We are capable of giving birth to great things, but we're all just as surely replaceable by other great things. We'll fall and disappear and the universe will grow new fruit with or without us; it will cleanse itself of the past and start over, a virtue none of us seem to be particularly keen on. All we can do is marvel at how unfathomable the greatness of it all is. The circle will carry on like it has since the beginning of time and whether or not we live to see it, it won't ever stop, and in a millisecond, both of us will cease to exist.

So if you think your threats mean anything to me, Regina, well then you've got to be fucking kidding me."

Regina stares at me for an unspoken eternity and then the binds around my limbs retreat. She disappears in a puff of smoke without uttering a single word.

Well that went better than expected.

My only option is to keep going forward anyway. I'm positive this isn't the last time we meet, but I guess there's no point in me sticking around with no company. Time to pick another card and hope for the best. There's one that bears a picture of webbed stained glass. Good enough. Hey, as long as it doesn't turn me into a vase, I'm happy.

I walk through the door to a giant platform made of glass. It emanates light as if I were stepping on sunlight itself, but all around there is nothing but darkness. Chills run down my spine; it's the same kind of darkness I woke up from in the first place. There's no mysterious voice this time; only windows and glass panels hovering purposelessly in the space around like a church without walls. Behind me, the hinges creak, and the door is already gone when I look back.

The individual panels don't just fit together to assemble a perfect circle. They're clearly arranged in specific shapes for a specific reason. I tilt my head; I'm standing on a picture. I take several cautious steps forward, examining the changes under my feet as I progress. Pale, pale, red, red, red, curve, a mess of blue and white, triangular spikes of brown that stick out in all directions and over there, a gloved hand… Oh, god.

It's Sora— but why? Why here? I don't—

The platform quakes and I stumble to keep my balance. When it's over, three items on three pedestals stare at me like three constrictors awaiting prey: wand, shield and sword. Ay, someone's been tampering with the laws of physics and existence again. I don't like that idea one bit. I don't like the idea that I'm being watched and that someone's directing my decisions one single bit. Maybe Regina wasn't completely wrong. Momentarily I consider throwing myself off the edge to get away, but that doesn't seem like a good idea, given the fact that I could as well end up falling indefinitely. Been there, not too impressed. Therefore, there's only one thing left to do, and it's blatantly clear to me what's being demanded of me.

Choose.

But how can I even choose when I don't know the repercussions_? Isn't that what you've been doing all along, Swan? _Give me a break, guilt, you're the very last thing I need to deal with right now. Hmph. Choose. I walk over to where Sora's face is embedded in the glass. His eyes are closed like he's sleeping, but he's still smiling. I smile too; that's not very hard to imagine happening.

One thing I know for sure; I will not be choosing the wand. I've seen magic and I don't want it anywhere close to me in the future. It might represent wisdom, but for me, when I look at its core, all I see is smoke and mirrors and peril. The sword and the shield give me a hard time, though. Both seem equally good. Offense or defense? Attack or wait? What I'd probably do is one thing, but what is the most viable option is a different matter altogether. What would Sora do? I don't think 'follow your heart' is going to lead me anywhere in case. Why does this have to be so complicated? Can't I just get pointers? For lost memories, proceed right this way, please. If you have any questions, press 1. If you require the assistance of a tour guide, press 2. In case you're not certain you want to follow this path at all, press 3 and our operator will briefly explain the benefits and drawbacks of each possible decision. But no, that would be too damn easy.

"My, the birdie appears to have reached an impasse."

From behind one of the stone pillars emerges a four-legged, pink and purple-striped creature. I say creature, even though it resembles a feline. Why? Well, aside from the color and ability to speak, it bears another unnerving feature; its teeth. A single row of long, sharp fangs that click into each other in a zig-zag pattern that resembles a zipper. Because they fit together in this fashion, the cat can't actually close its mouth, the corners of which form the tips of a crescent moon, resulting in ugly protruding cheekbones. The thing can't stop grinning.

The alternative is, of course, that it's just grinning because it feels like it. I'm not sure which makes me more uncomfortable.

"Cat got your tongue? I may retrieve it for you, if you want. Then again, I may not. Loose tongues are difficult to preserve in these circumstances. One wrong step and poof! They're out of your mouth for good."

I swallow as it nimbly makes its way to me. "Who are you?"

"Who are You, you say? I'm afraid I can't tell you much about You, but I do know a fair bit about Them, if you wish to hear."

"…What?"

"Very well – they are peculiar beings, Them. Wandering around without hearts; a sad fate indeed."

"Who's them?"

"Have you got clowns and sticks in your ears? I just told you. Nail my head to confused humans; they keep on coming and going, thinking they'll find rats in this bucket."

Not only is my new guide through Wonderland a cat, but it's a cat with an audible attitude of its own. Brilliant. And how very helpful!

The cat lowers its body to almost but not quite touch the glass floor, pretending to sneak up on my boot. Though I can never be sure it doesn't want to actually eat my boot. "The answer to your predicament is simple and unimaginable," it says in a ghastly voice that speaks footsteps in the dark. "You must decide your path for yourself. Ahead lies something you need, but to claim it, you must lose something dear."

These folks sure love to trade. The farther you go, the more you forget, and now this? Luckily for me in this case, I am but a beggar. "I have nothing left," I reply and step aside as the cat lunges at my foot.

"Well then, the solution presents itself, doesn't it?"

No shit, Sherlock. Two of them, to be precise. I push my knuckles into my eye sockets. It should be forbidden to make decisions that possibly greatly influence your fate in the morning. "Yeah but which—"

Oh. It's gone. Okay then. Sure. Let's do this.

"In the end your choice matters little. You won't be able to slice or crush the enemy you're about to face. Or perhaps you will. It all depends on whose eyes you steal," echoes a loud whisper. "I wouldn't recommend a mole's. Those gentlemen can't see very well," it adds and then it fades away.

I walk over to the middle pedestal and examine the sword hovering above it. It's plain with a broad blade, about as long as the keyblade. Cautiously I reach for the hilt. I've gotten a lot of practice swinging things lately anyway. I inhale and grasp it, expecting a mad hissing laugh to fry my eardrum, but nothing happens. Nothing, except for the ramp that emerges from the depths below, weaving a new stairway that seems to go on forever. The hilt moulds itself into a shape that fits my palm like a glove and I slash through the air from side to side just to test the weapon. It's surprisingly easy to maneuver; not too heavy to lift but not too light for me to lose my ground either. I suppose it was made for me after all.

I follow the ramp to the heavens, hoping to all that is sacred that the glass isn't slippery. That would be a most unfortunate turnout of events. The endless journey gives me time to think, though I doubt my conclusions will be of much good to anybody. I don't understand what the deal is with the man-imp and the evil queen and that black-haired woman from before… How long ago was that? How long do I sleep? If the drastic change in Regina's wardrobe from fairy to gothic is enough to go by, I probably hibernate. But the most important question is – how long do I have?

Perhaps I should have acted earlier. I should have killed her when I had the chance like he told me to, like she'd killed Red and me. But the fact remains that she could have repeated the feat at any moment. She didn't, which is only reasonable if she suddenly realized she needed me for something that wasn't there the last time we met. Ugh, I'm so confused. I just want to remember enough to know whom to trust, is that too much to ask?

At least one of them must have lied to me. Probably both. Probably in everything. The longer I think about it, the more I realize that I have little to zero way of determining which. So you know what? I'm going to press forward and see where the wind carries me. If none of this is real like she said, somewhere, something else must be the other side of the coin, and I'm going to find it sooner or later. And then, maybe, just maybe, the scars on my back aren't real either. I know this is a silly excuse to convince myself I have any say in the matter, but damn me to hell if I'm going to sit here and wait for mommy to pick me up. Ignorance? Far away from bliss.

The top of the opaque stairway feels like entering a damp cellar with a broken flashlight, except upwards. All it takes is one step to lock you away from freshly painted walls in a lightless cave. There is a sense of imminent wrongdoing and I falter as soon as both my feet stand within the new circle. I turn around, but the way back is no more. Of course not. They want their little lamb to keep going, so I do.

I can just barely see where I'm going. I can't cling to the idea of Sora's watchful sleep up here, since the colors only go as far as tarnished steel to coal. It dawns on me that the only thing that emanates light in this entire endless space is me. Me and that hooded figure on the other side.

"Finally," it utters. Although it stands past earshot, I can hear the smile in its voice, which reverberates off the edges of our mutual prison and intensifies into a haunting, sense-dulling hum.

I can't even begin to wonder before it sets off running in my direction. Its boots click on the glass in a quick steady rhythm as it grows and grows before me. Whoever this person is, they're not giving me much of a choice, and if it's a fight they're after, then it's a fight they'll get.

It happens too fast. The black hood covers everything but the wicked grin plastered on their face as the stranger spreads out their arms like wings and not one but two keyblades spawn in their hands. One of them is barely discernible from the darkness beyond; a tribute to dusk and the wings of demons and crowns of queens past. A chain runs through the middle of it, much like the chains of hell.

_I will banish you to oblivion. _

The other bears an opposite meaning. Paler than the brightest snow-ridden plain, it gives me opportunity to make a stand. This one carries a five-pointed star at the end of the keychain, speaking of once and future promises that last forever – or so they should.

_I will keep my oath._

The trio is thirteen steps' distance away from me when I summon the skeleton keyblade; twelve steps away when I switch it for the sword, gripping the latter off-hand; eleven steps away when I take my first; ten when I notice the streak of raven hair that has escaped the safety of the coat; eight when we first come close to exchanging a fleeting glance; six when Oblivion takes aim; four when I've figured out my first move; two when it goes for its target.

I dodge to the left, parrying the strike with my keyblade. Before Oathkeeper can replace it, I spin the hilt of the sword in my other hand to have it face the empty space behind me, and spin around to deflect the other keyblade with it. It's a risky move, I know. I could have easily missed my mark. Fortunately I hit with just enough force to distract it. The stranger staggers backwards and I see my chance to duck and swing at their knees. They evade. Then the warrior retaliates with a head-on slash at my chest.

The only thing I can do is cross both weapons in front of me and take the blow. It's my turn to falter and keep backing up each time cold steel meets cold steel. Step by step I'm forced to retreat. How long can I keep that up before I fall? How long before I'm bested? Not long enough.

The next time I parry, I let the blades get a little closer, just to push back when they're least expecting it. The high-pitched screech of metal against metal is painful to my ears, but hey, it gets the job done. Two sharp tips immediately point back my way. I mirror the stance, bending my knees in preparation to resume our clash. We stand face to face, drawing husky, ragged breaths. We haven't been at it for long, but we're exhausted. I'm not an extremely proficient warrior; that much is clear. If this person were to assassinate me, they could be doing a much better job. They're not, which signifies they're either playing with me or incapable. If so, let them have a taste of their own medicine.

The white-winged keyblade is tilted to the ground at just the right angle to tell me that the stranger's grip on it isn't as firm as it could be. That is my chance. I charge forward and when Oblivion rises to block my attack, I kick where I suppose the stomach would be hiding underneath the coat. Then I go straight for the handle of the keyblade in an attempt to pin it to the ground. I am successful; it drops with an echoing clank and skitters away. The figure growls.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you," I say in point-blank range of their neck.

Their reply is a name dotted with foul intentions spilled over smiling lips. "Hen—ry."

The figure attacks before I can process the word. I block it just short of my face, but the blade slides along mine, carving a geometrically perfect line across my cheek. God dammit. How could I let myself get caught off-guard so easily? I snarl and lunge, launching most of my body weight upon them and throwing them to the ground. The hood falls down, revealing the identity of my challenger.

I stare at her wide-eyed, dropping both the keyblade and the sword so that they lie on either side of us like victory banners. This can't be. This is impossible.

Everything is against me. Every hair—dark as the first blade she wields—cascading down her shoulders; every curve that defines her face; every speck of dust reflected in those empty, empty eyes; every patch of pale skin that contrasts unnaturally with the rest of her complexion; every wrinkle that curls in parallel lines as she smiles a wicked smile. Everything about her is all too familiar. They're things one would see every day but knows that they should never belong in one place, such as looking at day through night. _Not what you expected, template?_

She disappears from under me. I can't be bothered to pay attention. I'm being replaced.

"Psst, template, over here."

She has a boy, ten, maybe eleven years old. She has her arms around his neck. The boy is holding a blue box with four small wooden legs, golden lines painting branches on its sides, and an S-shaped handle sticking out of it. Music comes out; a melody of four repeating notes that I've heard one too many times, resembling my own heartbeat.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

The notes pass on a message from the boy's frightened eyes. He holds onto the box for dear life, wanting nothing but to extend his hand to me and knowing he would break it if he did. All the while she's still smiling.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

The notes change, rising a little higher, repeating the tune once more. E, E D, D G, G F. He mouths words at me, words I don't understand, words like 'mom' and 'help'. But there is a sentence with a meaning clear as crystal somewhere between the lines. _'You really don't remember me?'_

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

Beat. Beat. Beat. Beat. I watch, petrified, as she curls her fingers until only her index finger stays. She taps the boy's throat and then cuts off his head in an imaginary motion that traces his collarbones. In sync with that, the melody drops by half an octave, recording a somber encounter.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

Oathkeeper is the first to go. It dissipates into a misty cloud. The other keys follow. I have no idea how deep the limitless abyss all around is, but suddenly it begins to feel small, enclosed, as if the space were collapsing in on itself. The mirage of my image and the boy with the music box shatters along with what was behind them into chunks of glassy debris. The edges of the platform crumble, leaving eyeless doves of mirror to fly away from where there's no more feed. They rise in tens, dozens, and hundreds of little ones join in, chirping an organ symphony as their sharp wings bump into and crack each other. Their song drowns out the melody of the boy with the music box. It drowns out everything, even my body, even my name, except for one word that remains when the orchestra ends and I'm left falling, blind and helpless, into a dreamy nothingness.

_Dun, dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun._

"Roxas."


	9. Intermezzo: Wife

**Intermezzo 5 ½ - Wife**

/Today, Henry drew a picture of Mr. Cricket's umbrella floating in the sky/

/Perhaps I should stop hiding behind this pathetic notion that/

You left me, Emma. What good are those heroic promises of yours now? Where is your father's blood in your veins? He will keep making heartfelt proclamations of undying loyalty and he will keep pledging his allegiances long after he's drawn his last breath, no matter how much my ears may bleed. But you, you – you lock me in a cell, bring a cheap little trinket to "protect" me, an**d run off to be spirited away gods know where because obviously you have no other business to attend to and leave me to explain to our twelve year old son that—**

It should have been me. I should have been the one to carry her. I will make you remember if it is the last thing I do. I will make you remember how Henry screamed that he wanted a dad like all the other children before storming away from the dinner table and how in that moment neither of us were good enough, and how you said that he would grow out of it, but the very next day I found you leaning against marble with bandages wrapped around your chest, staring at the almost bare human being looking back at you and wondering just what kind of idiot you've grown into.

Henry apologized to both of us eventually, but when we decided on a second child, he took it we were simply hoping for better, more grateful offspring. Needless to say I did enjoy all the little things he started doing then to supposedly regain our trust: clean the quarters, help cook, try harder in his studies, groom the horses… Although you might not have noticed, I knew he wasn't acting of his own will, but instead felt he was being forced to convince us of his love for us. It took a fortnight before he finally admitted a sibling wouldn't scar his young self past the point of no return.

I will make you remember how we couldn't decide who would bear it and how we fought over whom, even as a necessary evil, to pick as a potential father. I evaded that aspect for as long as possible; I didn't want to share you. I still don't, but I suppose it's not up to me anymore.

You Charmings possess an irritating dash of know-it-all attitude. In my eyes, you've taken after your father a lot more than you have after your mother – thank the gods for that. No, it was Charming I saw, giving the order to fire, when you freely (and foolishly) assumed that after Henry, the responsibility fell on me to offer my body for the prospect. Of course it did. Why wouldn't it? Logically, it was my turn. You never stopped to consider the possibility that my plans might have been a little different from yours, did you?

Our fight that night reached as far as Henry's ears upstairs. (His room is up in the clouds, just like his head.) The following afternoon you said to me, "If that's how it needs to be then fine, I'm willing to give birth to your second child."

The way you said it – such lackluster defeat – it hurt me, Emma. It hurt me more than anything else you had ever told me. You had unconditionally accepted it as your duty, some sort of dignified godsent favor to me that you would carry that child. That was the last time we spoke that day, and in the evening, I took the liberty of sleeping in Henry's chambers and letting you have our quarters to yourself. Ever the perceptive young man, he picked right up on that.

"Emma didn't want to tuck me in?" he asked.

What do you even reply to that? I said: "Of course she did, sweetie. It's just that the two of us… we had a little disagreement regarding your sibling. Nothing to concern yourself with. We just can't decide which one should be the mother."

"You'll both be our moms in the end, like you are now. Does it really matter?"

"No. No, of course not. But it comes down to a great commitment. It's a very complicated process to have new life grow inside of you. Emma and I just need some time to think on it."

"Alone?"

"Alone."

"But mom," he squeezed my hand meaningfully, "Emma's always been alone."

The child made me understand and in turn, I will make you remember that when you had our son, you were alone, and when they were tearing your heart out from the weeping bundle in your arms, then too were you alone, so there was no reason for you to not be alone this time around.

"'Our.'"

"Huh?"

"You said you would carry 'my' child. I'm correcting you."

"Come to bed."

It should have been me crawling underneath this burden on my shoulders. Sometimes it occurs to me that you must have known all along how it would end, which is why you made the decisions you made.

But then you ran.


End file.
